


when you are close to me, i shiver

by ChancellorGriffin



Series: Welcome to the Rare Pair Trash Bin, Population: ME [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy Has Feelings, Bisexual Male Character, Camp Jaha | Arkadia, Car Sex, City of Light (The 100), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Older Woman/Younger Man, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Season/Series 03, Road Trips, Season 3 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:49:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6745573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everyone on twitter: “i could NEVER EVER ship abby/bellamy”<br/>me: “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED”</p><p>-------------------------------<br/>Okay I don't know how this somehow turned into my Season 3 Bellamy fix-it fic, but it did, and I'm not apologizing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-S3. 3 weeks after Clarke left. Kane left immediately after to go looking for her. (Gina exists, but is dating Raven.)

The Rover was Raven and Sinclair’s first project, after the citizens of Camp Jaha – or, as the newly-convened Earth Council had just decided to name it, “Arkadia” – finally resigned themselves to the necessity of returning to Mount Weather to collect supplies, and it changed everything.  The upside was that trips which used to take crews of half a dozen, walking all day, hauling food and equipment back in handheld carts, now took only a few hours and could be done with two people.

The downside was that so far, only two people had been trained to drive it.  And today, Raven was rewiring a whole bank of electric stoves for the kitchens, which meant Abby was stuck with Bellamy.

Abby didn’t quite know why it was that the two of them had never been comfortable around each other.  She had made cautious inroads with most of the others, after they returned from Mount Weather and the newly-mixed community of Sky People and the remaining members of the 100 began to realize that they weren’t two separate worlds anymore.  Monty Green liked her, which helped, and she’d always been close with Raven.  Jasper Jordan couldn’t be around anyone who reminded him of Clarke, which made his medical checkups a trial, but it was impossible for Abby to blame him.  Even Octavia, who didn’t seem to care for anyone from the Ark at all, had seemed, at least a little, to be beginning to thaw.

But Bellamy was different, and she didn’t quite know why.

Or, rather, that wasn’t quite true.  She knew exactly why.

But she couldn’t say it.

Neither of them could say it.

Neither of them had said her name out loud since the day she turned her back on the gates of Camp Jaha, walked into the woods and disappeared.

* * *

 

He didn’t come inside with her.  He never did, unless he had to.  When Raven drove, she would follow Abby on her rounds through the Mount Weather medical facility and storage rooms, pushing a cart and making small talk while Abby collected boxes of syringes and antibiotics.  It helped, to have someone else there.  It helped keep the ghosts away.

But nothing could keep the ghosts away from Bellamy, so Abby didn’t push him when she got out of the Rover and he didn’t follow.

“I’ll be here when you’re done,” he said tonelessly, and he wasn’t looking at her, he was staring straight ahead at the door in the side of the mountain, and Abby’s heart cracked a little as she watched his jaw tighten.  He didn’t unbuckle his seatbelt, didn’t even take his hands off the wheel.  He stayed there, as though ready to run.  As though at any moment that door could swing open and reveal an army of Mountain Men on the other side of it.

But there were no more Mountain Men, because Bellamy’s hand had been on that lever too.

Abby put her hand on his shoulder, startling them both, and he flinched like her touch had burned him but – surprisingly – didn’t pull away.

“I’ll be as fast as I can,” she promised him, and she felt him soften a little in relief.

It would be over soon.

Bellamy Blake lived with the ghosts of Mount Weather every day.  He coped the best he could.  But it helped when he didn’t have to walk across the ground where they were buried.

* * *

Her list for this trip, though urgent (they had almost completely run out of sterile gauze and there was a particularly nasty flu currently running through the camp) wasn’t long, and it only took her about twenty minutes to collect almost everything she needed.

The problem was that she couldn’t find the stepstool.

The storage facility at Mount Weather contained walls of 8-foot metal shelving and Abby was, to put it delicately, insufficient in height to reach anything on the top 2 shelves.  Raven had dragged in a stepladder the last time they were here, but clearly someone on Tuesday’s supply run had moved it; she hunted high and low but couldn’t find it anywhere.  But all the remaining cases of sterile gauze were on the top shelf.  She couldn’t reach them herself, she couldn’t go home without them, and she was left with only one option.

To his credit, he was polite on the walkie-talkie and didn’t complain once.  He found her in the storage unit, reached up to effortlessly lift down the case, asked her “is this the last of it?” and, when she nodded, wordlessly turned back to the door towards the Rover.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  He didn’t turn around.

“It’s fine.”

“I hated to have to ask you – “

“Don’t worry about it.”

But she watched his shoulders collapse a little under the release of tension as they stepped out of the Mountain and back into the sunlight, and she knew that even those three minutes back inside those walls had cost him something terrible.  Bellamy wasn’t going to sleep tonight, and it was her fault for not being able to reach that shelf, and Kane was gone, and he couldn’t talk to Octavia about this, and she could feel the tension radiating off of him and they still had three hours in the car together before they arrived back home, and the only person who had figured out how to play music in the Rover was Jasper.

 _Well, at least it can’t get any worse,_ thought Abby ruefully, which is exactly the kind of tempting fate that leads to the universe deciding to test that theory with a flat tire less than half a mile down the road away from Mount Weather.

* * *

“They’ll be here in five hours,” said Bellamy, opening the back of the Rover where Abby had piled up a heap of guard jackets to take a nap.  The cab of the Rover was open to the elements, and it would be dark soon, and Abby was beginning to get cold.  But the back was designed for storage transport, which meant it was watertight and well-insulated.  She’d closed the sliding panel that separated it from the cab, switched on the emergency lantern, and had sat down to wait while Bellamy radioed Sinclair.  The team was on the way with both a spare tire, and six people pushing supply carts, in case they had to leave the Rover and bring the medical equipment back on foot.  “I’ll be in the front if you need me.”

“Bellamy, it’s freezing.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re so afraid I’m going to say her name that you can’t even be in the same room with me,” said Abby, the words tumbling out of her before she even realized what she was staying.  He froze with his back to her.  “You’re so angry at her that you can’t even see straight,” she went on.  “You’re so angry at her, you’re angry at me.”

“I’m not angry,” he said, in a gruff, harsh voice, and even though she couldn’t see him she could tell that he was crying.

“Would it help,” she said, “if I told you that sometimes I’m angry too?”

This got him to turn around.  She held out her hand.

“It’s freezing outside,” she said again, “and it’s freezing in the front seat.  Will you please just come inside?”

He hesitated for a long moment, then reluctantly climbed into the back of the Rover and closed the door behind him, sealing them into warm darkness, illuminated only by the blinking lights of Bellamy’s radio and the soft glow of the emergency lantern.

Abby didn’t press her luck right away.  She’d gotten him, at least, to acknowledge her.  She’d gotten far enough that he seemed, for the moment, no longer so furiously desperate to be alone.  So she didn’t push him to talk just yet.  She just sat, knees drawn up in front of her, back braced against the walls of the Rover, pulled a protein bar out of her backpack, and let Bellamy get used to her.

They sat in silence – though not a totally uncomfortable one – for nearly half an hour before they heard the first thunderclap.  Their eyes met with the same twinge of panic, which was confirmed about five minutes later when Sinclair radioed back to tell them a storm was on the way.

“The emergency case in the back has blankets and food rations and water,” he said.  “Sit tight until morning.”

Bellamy clicked the radio off and looked up at Abby.

“I swear to God,” he said, “if you somehow cooked up a thunderstorm to trap me in the back of this goddamn truck to get me to talk about my feelings – “

Abby burst out laughing.  After a minute, she saw a fraction of a smile begin to tug at the corner of Bellamy’s mouth.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” she observed, and he raised an eyebrow but didn’t disagree.

“Not a lot of laughs around Camp Jaha these days,” he pointed out, which was impossible to disagree with, and she conceded with a shrug.

“We don’t have to talk about Clarke,” said Abby.  “But I think we should talk about you.”

“No thanks,” said Bellamy.

“You don’t talk,” she said.  “To anybody.”

“I talk plenty.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You a therapist now?” he asked, a flicker of irritation beginning to show through.  She reached back into her backpack and pulled out a flask of moonshine.

“No,” she said.  “But I’d like to be your friend.”

He looked from the flask to her and back again, as if unsure whether taking the flask signaled a commitment of some kind to a deeper intimacy than he was comfortable with.  But they were stuck in the storage compartment of a truck being pummeled with hailstones, so in the end he sighed and took a long, deep swig before reaching back across the crates of supplies to pass it back to her.

“Okay,” she said with a smile.  “That’s a start.”

“You gonna make me talk now?”

“We have twelve hours to kill,” she pointed out.  “If you want, I can go first.”

* * *

The moonshine helped.

Four hours later, the bottle half empty, they had made slow but definite progress.  Abby was pleased.

They didn’t talk about Clarke at all, or Mount Weather, or anything that had happened since the 100 landed.  They talked about the Ark instead – about their childhoods (Abby remembered Aurora Blake with no great fondness, and her impressions were not improved by Bellamy’s stories), about books, about the way life used to be.  Abby surprised herself by opening up about Jake, and Bellamy surprised her by listening, his eyes compassionate and warm on hers.

At some point, she didn’t recall how long ago, she had pulled off her socks and boots and jacket to get more comfortable, and crawled over to the emergency supply box to pull out blankets for both of them, coaxing Bellamy to shed his stiff guard jacket for a blanket instead.  And for reasons she could not have explained, instead of returning to her seat across from him, she sat down beside him instead.

He tensed up at the close proximity, but he didn’t move away.

“Here,” she said, passing him the blanket and helping him tuck it around him.  “Now you’ll be plenty warm.”

He looked at her with something unreadable in his eyes, and she felt her heart contract a little bit.  “What?” she asked him.

He shook it off.  “Nothing,” he said, and turned away.

“Bellamy.”

“It’s just – “  He stopped, his jaw clenching and unclenching.  Abby didn’t push him, simply sat patiently and waited.  His hand was resting on the metal floor, next to her own, and after a moment, she took it in hers.  He didn’t pull away.  “It’s just been a long time since someone was nice to me,” he said, and something inside Abby shattered.

“Come here,” she said firmly, and pulled him into her arms.

Bellamy wasn’t comfortable with hugging, and she felt him stiffen instantly.  The talking, the light touch of her hand, the closeness, all these things he’d been able to bear just fine.  But the moment Abby took him in her arms he tensed up like a panicked wild animal in flight.

“You’re not a monster,” she murmured quietly into his soft dark hair, her hands warm and comforting on his back, and she knew from the way he collapsed against her that she had read him correctly.  It had been the right thing to say.

“Jasper can’t even look at me,” he said in a rough voice, muffled by her shoulder.  “Octavia won’t talk to anyone but Lincoln.  And all the others, they all know what I did.”

“You saved us,” she said quietly.  “You and Clarke and Monty.  You saved us.  That’s what you did.”  She took his face in her hands and lifted it up so he could look at her, so she could look into his eyes, because this was important and he needed to hear it.  “Bellamy, I would be dead if it wasn’t for you,” she said frankly.  “We all would be.  Marcus, Raven, Harper, Miller – every last one of us.  We would all be dead.”  He cast his eyes downward, unable to meet her gaze.  “You’re not a monster,” she said.  “You’re a good man.  That’s why it feels like this.  That’s why it hurts.  That’s why you feel the weight of all those lives.  You think that’s what makes you a monster, but you’re wrong, Bellamy, you’re completely wrong.  It doesn’t make you a monster.  It’s the way that you know that you’re not.”

Her hand on his cheek was warm and gentle, and after a long moment she coaxed him back up to look at her.  “It will get better,” she murmured.  “I’ve been where you are, Bellamy, and so has Marcus.  Trust me.  None of us have clean hands, but we’re all doing the best we can.”  He didn’t fight back the tears spilling down his face – he seemed hardly even to notice them – and he didn’t resist as she reached up to brush them away.  “You have a good heart,” she said, her voice low, drawing him so close to her that their foreheads were nearly touching.  “You’re a good man.  That’s why it feels like this.”

He closed his eyes, and she looked at his dark eyelashes glittering with tears, and she did the most inexplicable thing she had ever done in her life.

She lifted his face to hers, and kissed him.

His lips parted beneath hers instantly, even as she felt his muscles beneath her hands tense in startled astonishment.  His mouth worked hungrily beneath hers, kissing her back with incredible force as though he couldn’t help himself, but his whole body was rigid, stiff, unyielding.  He was being pulled in two directions, unsure which way to go, unsure whether to lean into her or pull away.  But her lips were impossibly soft, insistent, persuasive against his, her arms were warm and strong, and no one had ever held Bellamy Blake like this in all his life.  No one had ever touched him with this kind of tenderness.  And slowly, slowly, she felt the panicked, tightly-coiled fight-or-flight reflex of his body begin to ease.  One hand slid up to caress his hair, gently, affectionately, and it made him shift almost imperceptibly towards her. He liked that.  He liked to be touched.  She suspected he was starved for it.  So with one hand she stroked his hair, thick and soft beneath her questing fingers, and she ran the other lightly, soothingly, up and down his arm, the way she would soothe a frightened animal to keep it from bolting.   _You’re safe,_ her touch said.   _I’ve got you.  I’m right here._

“Abby,” he said uncertainly as her mouth drifted from his lips to his cheek to trail kisses down his throat.  “I don’t know if – “  But his voice broke off as she nuzzled softly into the hollow of his collarbone, and a faint sound that was almost a sigh escaped him.

“I can stop,” she whispered into his ear, “if you want me to stop.”  He didn’t answer. “Bellamy, do you want me to stop?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered back, a faint tremble in his voice.  “I don’t know.”

She sat back up to look into his eyes, dark and turbulent and full of emotion, and she took his face in both her hands.  “Talk to me,” she said.  “Tell me what you want.  Tell me what you need, Bellamy, and I’ll do it.”

He couldn’t answer her.  He was staring at her, a thousand different emotions wrestling across his face.  There was desire, clearly – the kiss had stirred something inside him, and she could see from the way his breath was rapid and shallow that he was in the grip of a powerful longing to pull her close and kiss her again.  But there was confusion, too, tinged with something like fear or mistrust or even suspicion.  It was the face of someone who knows perfectly well that anyone, at any time, can walk away and leave you.  He was afraid to ask for what he wanted because he didn’t trust her.  He didn’t trust anybody.

She was going to have to take this very, very slow.

She pressed another soft kiss against his mouth and stroked his cheek, feeling his clenched jaw soften beneath his touch, but he still couldn’t bring himself to move towards her.  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said gently.  “I’ll be right here, whenever you’re ready.”

Then she shifted her weight, sitting back on her heels to give him a little space, and very slowly pulled her sweater off over her head.

If she had had any doubts about how the kiss had made Bellamy feel, they dissolved instantly at the way his eyes raked greedily, hungrily over her breasts inside her faded black cotton bra.  “What are,” he started to say, then stopped and swallowed hard to compose himself.  “What are you doing?” he tried again, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“We have twelve hours to kill,” she said.  “I’m planning to sleep for at least some of them.  Are you?”  He nodded.  “Were you going to sleep in your uniform?”  He looked away.  She sighed.  “Oh for God’s sake,” she said, exasperation tinged with fondness in her voice.  “You were going to sleep in your uniform sitting up in the driver’s seat all night long, weren’t you?”  His awkward silence was confirmation.  “All right,” she said firmly.  “If nothing else, Bellamy Blake, I am going to make sure you actually get a good night’s sleep.”

“I don’t sleep much,” he said, and from the way he couldn’t quite look at her – like he was confessing something shameful – she guessed that the nightmares were worse than she had thought.

“Take your boots off,” she said to him, and something in being given simple instructions rather than being asked to make a complex emotional decision seemed to resettle him a little.  So he did.  Abby unfastened and removed her jeans, which Bellamy couldn’t quite bring himself to watch, shyness radiating off him in waves.  Then she took the heap of jackets she’d been napping on earlier, spread it out a little to make room for two, and lay down with her blanket on top of her.  He seemed to relax, a little, with her bare skin covered.  “Take off your shirt,” she said to him, and he did, and then it was her turn to stare.

His chest was perfect, smooth and tight with hard powerful muscles.  He could feel her looking at him, and it the shyness emanating from him grew.  He was a handsome guy, and she knew – from things she’d picked up here and there around camp – that he’d never had a problem getting girls to go to bed with him.  It wasn’t the feeling of a woman staring openly at his bare chest that made him strangely timid.  It was the fact that Abby _saw_ him.

He took off his jeans without being prompted – mostly, she suspected, because it distracted him from looking at her – and then, after a long, long moment of indecision, he crawled underneath Abby’s blanket, draping his own on top of hers.  All in all, it was far from the most uncomfortable bed either of them had ever had.

Bellamy lay stiffly on his back, staring up at the roof of the Rover.  Abby shifted her weight to lean onto his chest and gently stroke his face with her soft fingertips.  “Bellamy,” she said softly.  “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

“Will you just,” Bellamy began, and then stopped, as though he’d almost frightened himself.

“It’s okay,” she murmured gently.  “Tell me, Bellamy.  You can say it.”

But he couldn’t ask, he couldn’t say the words, his cheeks were flushed red with furious mortification as if he’d already revealed too much by admitting he wanted anything at all.  So she took a shot in the dark.

“What if I just hold you?” she said softly.  “Was that what you meant?”  He froze a little, and gave the faintest of tiny, stiff nods, still not looking at her.  She smiled.  “Of course I will,” she whispered.  “Of course I will.”  She held out her arms to him and, after a long moment, he rolled over from his back to his side so he could face her, and he let her pull him close.  He was stiff and tense at first, just as he had been before, but once again, Abby’s persistence paid off.  She stroked his hair, soothing him, caressing him, until the tension in his neck and back began to ease and he lowered his head to rest against her shoulder.  “That’s it,” she murmured into his hair, and cradled him close to her chest as her other hand slid to his back, her soft warm palm sliding up and down the ridges of his spine.

He was coiled taut as a bowstring, but she could feel him soften inside her embrace, and after a few minutes had passed he tentatively wrapped one arm around her too, pulling their bodies even closer together.  “That feels good,” she murmured to him encouragingly, so he tightened his grip and pulled her closer, and she remembered something Marcus had told her once about Bellamy, after they had returned from Mount Weather.  What Bellamy needed most, Marcus had explained to her, was approval.  Reassurance.  He was always so afraid to make a mistake, afraid he had done the wrong thing.  He was always punishing himself for something.  “He needs to know we see him,” Marcus had said.  “So whenever he does something right, you should always tell him.”

“I like the way it feels when you hold me like that,” she whispered into his ear, and he pulled her even closer, so close that she could feel his strong, muscled thigh against hers.  His fingertips against her bare back were shy at first, but grew bolder, sliding down her spine to rest at the curve of her waist.

“You’re really warm,” he murmured, his voice muffled by the skin of her shoulder, and she chuckled a little.

“You are too,” she said.  “It feels really good.”

“Why are you nice to me?” he asked abruptly, and there was something a little hollow and devastated in his voice that put another little crack in her heart, so she pulled his face up to hers so she could look at him again.

“You don’t trust anyone, do you?” she asked frankly, and there was no judgment in it, no condemnation, but it was so brutally, pointedly _true_ that he couldn’t look at her anymore.  “I’m not her, Bellamy,” she said, startling the breath out of him.  “I’m here.  I didn’t run.  We’re all here.  All the rest of us.  We all love you.  And we all stayed.”

“She ran out on you too,” he said.

“I know she did,” said Abby.  “And I hate it.  I hate it every day.  But I have faith that she’ll come back when she’s ready.  And I’ll be here when she is.  I’m not going anywhere,” she said, cupping his cheek in her hand.  “For her, for you, for Marcus, for all of you.  You’re never going to have to worry about me running out on you.  You’re never going to have to worry about me not being here if you need me.  I know you don’t let people in easily, Bellamy, but I’m right here.  I’m always going to be right here.”

He closed his eyes, and she could feel him begin to soften, so she pressed another soft kiss on his mouth.  “Let me in,” she whispered.  “Let me hold you.  Let me keep you warm.  I promise you’re safe.  I promise I’ll be here in the morning.”

“Abby – “

“You’re afraid to want anything,” she murmured, “because everything you ever wanted has been taken away, or destroyed.  But it doesn’t have to be like that now.  You can ask me for anything you want.  What do you want, Bellamy?” she asked him, her voice barely a whisper, and something inside him snapped.

“I want _you_ ,” he said gruffly, and then his mouth swallowed up hers in a ferocious kiss, and that was the end of the talking.

Abby hadn’t been with a man Bellamy’s age since she was his age too, and there was something so endearing in his enthusiasm.  He kissed her with his whole body, his arms tightening around her as he shifted his weight until she was flat on her back and he was lying above her, braced on his forearms and knees to avoid crushing her but still allowing her the pleasurable sensation of feeling the weight of his hard, strong young body pressing down against her.

They kissed for a long, long time.  Abby wrapped her arms tightly around his back – he seemed to like that, when she held him – while he tangled his fingers in her loose, untidy hair, spread out on the makeshift bed below her.  His lips were fuller than she’d thought, and he used them with a degree of skill that made her shiver a little with anticipation.  As his mouth drifted away from hers to make its way down her throat to her chest, she couldn’t help herself and let out a soft, contented, dreamy little sigh, which made Bellamy freeze with his mouth buried between her breasts, and even though his face wasn’t visible she could read the thoughts in his mind as clearly as if they were written on his skin.

“I want to,” she said firmly.  “Do you want to?”

There was a pause.  Then he looked up at her and nodded, almost in spite of himself, and her face broke open into a wide, delighted smile that bathed him in warmth and sweetness.  “Then we better get out of the last of these clothes,” she said sensibly, and he laughed.

“I got this,” he said, and before she could even move he had reached beneath her, unhooked her bra, discarded it, and taken her breast into his mouth, all in one fluid movement.  She made a sound that was partly a gasp of surprise, partly a moan of pure pleasure, and partly laughter.

“Nice moves,” she said approvingly, and she could feel him smiling against her skin.

“I got more.”

“Is that a promise?”

He reached down to her waist and pulled off her threadbare cotton panties, setting them aside before pulling off his own shorts as well.  “Could be,” he said archly, lowering himself back down to kiss her some more, and she laughed again.

“I like you like this,” she told him as his now-naked body pressed fervently against hers, and he gave a rueful smile.

“This is the part I’m good at,” he said, and he was partly flirting with her but also partly confessing something that he wasn’t sure how he felt about.  It was as though he was telling her that the physical act he could handle, but it was the emotional intimacy she offered that frightened him so badly.

“You’re better at the other part than you think you are,” she said.  “But you seem pretty good at this part too.”

When he kissed her this time, his body covering hers with a blissfully warm weight, his hips sank down against hers and she gasped at the startling sensation of the hot, heavy cock resting between them which it was suddenly impossible for either of them to ignore.  She felt it, and he saw that she felt it, and she liked that it didn’t embarrass him.  It was soft, still, but she could feel it begin to swell slowly into hardness against her skin.

“Lie back,” she whispered to him, pushing at his shoulders to roll him over and then kissing her way underneath the blankets down his chest to get a closer look.

“Abby, what – “ he began to say, but whatever he was going to say next died in a half-choked gasp as her warm wet mouth parted and took him inside.

His whole body went stiff and rigid with exertion again, as though fighting back against waves of pleasure.  She couldn’t speak, to tell him to breathe and relax, but she reached her hands up to where she could feel him bunching up the thick canvas fabric beneath them in tight, white-knuckled fists.  As her lips roused him with soft, wet, open-mouthed kisses up and down his thick shaft, as she swirled her tongue in dizzying circles around the ridges on the pulsing, aching tip, she rested her hands over his fists and slowly, slowly caressed them open until she could interlace her fingers with his.  It helped.  His breathing leveled out, he relaxed into her, and he began to make soft, desperate pleasure sounds as her mouth gently, painstakingly roused him to hardness.

When she finally pulled away, the sound out of his mouth was almost a whimper as she kissed her way back up his chest.  He seized her face in his hands, crashing his mouth against hers, desperate, frantic, unleashed, and then she felt him grip her shoulders and press her back against the floor.  “Let me,” he panted.  “Please.  Let me.”  She nodded, breathless, and he kissed his way down her chest to rest against the soft mound between her thighs.  She parted them wide, offering him access, and he dived in hungrily, attacking her cunt with a frantic, puppyish enthusiasm.  She gasped with startled pleasure and a hint of amusement.

“Easy,” she cautioned him, tangling her hands gently in his hair.  “Easy.  Gentle.”  He slowed down obediently, the hard wild strokes of his tongue softening to long slow gliding licks, and she purred a little with pleasure.  “That’s good,” she told him.  “Oh, that’s really good.”  Pleased with himself, he pressed a gentle kiss against her clit, causing her hips to rise upwards almost of their own volition.  “I like it right there,” she whispered, her fingers caressing his temples, stroking his thick dark curls.  “Just like that.  Kiss me there again.”  He obeyed, and was rewarded with another sharp moan and arch of her back.  “You feel so good,” she whispered, her heart racing in her chest at every stroke of his tongue.  “I love the way you do that.”

And Marcus had been right, Marcus had read Bellamy correctly, because her gentle encouragement seemed to sink into him and make him feel more sure of himself.  After a few minutes, his shyness disappeared completely, and he didn’t need her instructions anymore.  He knew exactly what to do.  He even had a few tricks she’d never even tried, like taking her clit between his lips and suckling lightly at it, which sent her into the stratosphere.

When she came, his tongue sweeping across her cunt with firm, insistent strokes, her cry was so loud that they were both desperately grateful to be trapped in a hailstorm with no human beings closer than a twelve-hour walk away.  It was a wild, high-pitched cry that startled them both, and she could see in his eyes as he climbed out from under the covers and back up to kiss her stickily on the mouth that he was equal parts aroused, and proud of himself.

“Good boy,” she said teasingly, patting his cheek, which made him laugh, and pounce on her, pinning her to the ground beneath him.

“Don’t patronize me,” he chuckled, mouth brushing against her neck.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.  “Good _man_.”

“Better.”

“You’re incredibly good at this,” she said, smiling, “for however old you are.”

“And you’re ridiculously gorgeous,” he said frankly, “for however old _you_ are.”

“That was a good answer,” she said, and he laughed and kissed her.

“It’s true,” he said.  “Why else did you think I was going to sleep in the front of the truck?”

This delighted her unreasonably.  “Really,” she exclaimed, a mischievous grin on her face.  “Is _that_ why you’re always so tense when we’re alone together?”

“Part of it,” he confessed.

“Aren’t you glad I convinced you not to sleep alone in the front seat?”

“Very glad,” he agreed, pressing a light kiss against the tip of her nose which inexplicably made her want to burst into tears.  It was such an uncharacteristically intimate gesture.  It was so open, so easy, so unlike him.  It was a side of him she wondered if anyone had seen before, beneath that shell of iron, and she couldn’t stop herself from wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest.

She held him like that for a long time, his warm body pressed against hers, before he shifted his weight and looked down at her with something in his eyes that was like a plea, and suddenly nothing was funny anymore, suddenly all she wanted was to open her whole self to him with infinite warmth and tenderness and take him inside of her and hold him close.  So she reached down between their bodies, grasped his now-achingly stiff cock in her small, sure hand, and gently guided him inside of her.

The shock of it was so fierce that they both gasped.  He was big, and swollen to dizzying hardness, filling her completely.  And even though he was young, and full of unbridled enthusiasm, he was still careful, gentle, precise.  He went slow, gliding in inch by inch, filling her, stretching her open, but letting her get used to the feel of him as he went.  But she could feel, from the hissing intake of his breath, that he was struggling to hold himself in check, struggling not to be overwhelmed by pleasure.  “Abby,” he groaned into her bare shoulder, and she wrapped her arms tighter and pulled him close.

“Let me take care of you,” she whispered, stroking his back, as he nuzzled deeply into her soft skin, kissing her neck and shoulders.  “You’re always the one taking care of everyone else.  Let me take care of you, Bellamy.  Let me just make you feel good.  Let me be close to you.  Just for tonight.  Will you let me do that?”  He nodded, overwhelmed, unable to look up, suddenly shy again, but Abby wasn’t.  Abby knew just what to do.

And after a moment, so did he.

Her hips rocked up towards him, sending him deeper inside her, and it lit a spark inside him, and within moments it was all panting and gasping and grunting, hands tangled in hair and scratching at backs, hips frantically careening together over and over and over, warm skin sheened with sweat.  Clutching him tightly between her thighs, to keep him from letting go, Abby rolled them both back over the other direction so Bellamy lay on his back, and she rose up to brace her palms against his chest and ride him, slow and deep, hips rolling back and forth as his gasps deepened.  The new angle made Abby feel dizzy with pleasure, sending him further and further inside her, and she leaned forward to gently stroke his sweaty hair and murmur “Just let go, just breathe” as she rode him faster and faster.

“Abby,” he gasped brokenly as she felt him begin to swell and tremble, and she smiled down at him, encouraging.

“Come for me,” she whispered, caressing his cheek and hair, and he did.  His hips bucked and writhed beneath hers in a frantic staccato rhythm that brought her to her own climax just a heartbeat after him.  Their desperate, raw moans echoed inside the metal box of the Rover, and their breath took a long, long time afterwards to finally soften back to normal.

“Oh God,” she whispered, once she could speak again, and kissed his mouth over and over.  “That felt so good.”  She caressed his cheek warmly, tenderly.  “You made me come so hard,” she whispered, and even though it made him blush, she could see that he was pleased.

“I – you were – that was really good,” he said haltingly.  “I mean like.  For me, too.  Really good.”

“I’m glad,” she smiled at him.  “That’s what I wanted.”

Before he had time to pull away, to become tense or embarrassed again, Abby rolled off of him back down onto the heap of canvas and curled up into his side, her head pillowed on his chest and her arms around him.  His arms came up unhesitatingly to wrap around her back, holding her in place, and as they lay there listening to the echo of hail on the roof of the Rover, sated and sweaty and warm and content, Abby could feel Bellamy’s breathing begin to ease into the peaceful rhythm of sleep, and she knew down to her very bones that as long as she held him, the nightmares would stay far away.

“Goodnight,” she whispered to him softly.

“Thank you,” he whispered back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe how many people asked for a second chapter??? So I was like "yeah okay sure if it hits 500 on AO3 I'll write another one" and HERE WE ARE

They both slept soundly, better than they had in . . . weeks? Months?  No nightmares, no restlessness, no fear.  Just stillness, the sound of the rain, and perfect peace.

The warm, drowsy weight of Abby’s small body blanketing his soothed Bellamy into oblivion, and the ghosts of Mount Weather, of the Culling, of Finn and Charlotte and Wells, of all the other people he hadn’t been able to save, were as distant and remote and far away from him that night as if Clarke had taken them all with her when she left.

Abby did not dream of Jake that night either, and wasn’t awakened in the night with frenzied, panicked nightmares about Clarke.  Bellamy’s chest was solid and reassuring, something concrete and real to hold onto.  She rested her head against his warm, sweat-dampened skin, just over his heart, feeling its rhythm slow from the wild desperate pounding of orgasm into the steady, gentle pulse of sleep.

They awoke to silence.  The rain had stopped overnight, and even though it was still pitch-dark inside the Rover it was clear the storm had passed and the sunshine had returned.  They could hear birds singing in the trees around them.

“Good morning,” said Abby, as Bellamy sleepily opened his eyes, and kissed him before he could decide to feel embarrassed about last night.

But he wasn’t.  Not at all.

“Good morning,” he agreed, grinning at her, and then kissed her back so fierce and hard that she had to pull away, gasping and laughing, to catch her breath.

“How do you feel?” she asked, her tone carefully neutral, not wanting to push him to say more than he felt comfortable, but curious all the same.

“Starving,” he answered frankly, and she burst out laughing.  She reached over his chest to grab the supply packs and pull out a couple of protein bars.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” she said, handing one to him, but he set it aside and took hers out of her hand as well.

“In a minute,” he told her, and then in one swift movement he flipped her onto her back and disappeared underneath the emergency blankets.

He was a quick study.  Her hands tangled frantically in his thick soft curls as he burrowed deeply into the warm wetness of her thighs, and her breath came fast and shallow.  He’d remembered her instructions from the night before; his tongue and lips were hard and soft in all the right places, and even though he was still young and hungry and eager, he paced himself without needing to be reminded at all.  “That feels so good,” she murmured happily, and she could feel his mouth draw into a smile around her clit, pleased at her approval.  “Oh God, honey, that feels so good.”  In response, he nestled into her even deeper, tongue tracing circles around the aching bud at her center, leaving her panting and shaken.  “You’re going to make me pass out,” she gasped as the tip of his tongue flicked at her clit, causing her hips to jerk upwards and making him chuckle a little as his big hands grasped at her hips to hold her down.

The orgasm rising up inside her felt like a tidal wave.  “I’m so close,” she whispered, feeling herself climbing and climbing towards the peak as he slowed himself down to torture her, to draw it out.  “Please, please, please.”  But he smiled inside her and shook his head, pulling back and brushing only the lightest of soft, fluttering licks against her desperately aching wetness.  He’d been obedient last night, but now he was going to have some fun tormenting her.

She tried commanding – “fuck me, Bellamy, make me come, right there, stay right there, harder, harder” – and when that didn’t work, she tried begging – “oh God, please, please, _please_ make me come, honey, I’m so close, please.”  But he’d taken charge, he’d found some new reserve of inner confidence, and he was going to have his way, and no amount of pleading could control him.  He was as stubborn as she was.

She was trembling and half faint, his tongue gliding in slow lazy strokes through her hot, aching folds when the telltale beep of the long-distance radio made both their hearts stop beating.  Bellamy froze, his tongue still deep inside her.

"Bellamy, you there?" came Sinclair's friendly but never-more-unwelcome voice.  "Bellamy, it's Sinclair, can you hear me?"

Abby looked down at him. "Are you gonna get that?"

“You really want me to stop and answer the radio?” he asked skeptically, flicking at her clit again until she gasped sharply.

"Oh God, no," she pleaded, between rough panting breaths, "don't stop."

"Then you'd better answer it," he retorted, and set back to work.

She reached over to grab the radio and push the button so she could reply.

"Bellamy?" came Sinclair's voice again, but Abby's response was swallowed up as she bit her lip and hissed a sharp intake of breath to stifle a scream.  Bellamy had chosen this exact moment, for some mischievous reason, to wrap his lips lightly around her clit and begin to suckle it.  She swatted him on the head and took a deep breath to collect herself.  "Bellamy, you okay?"

"It's Abby," she said tightly into the receiver, clenching her fists and fighting to keep her voice level.  "Bellamy is . . . kind of in the middle of something.”

"You guys doing okay?"

"Oh, just fine," she said, more or less managing a commendably casual tone.  “What’s up?”

“We got a late start because of the storm,” Sinclair, “but we’re on our way.  We’ll see you in about four and a half hours.  You guys hanging in there?”

“We’re occupying ourselves the best we can,” she said, biting her lip to keep from gasping as Bellamy’s mouth opened and closed, pressing devouring kisses all over her cunt.

“I’m sure it’s been a real bonding experience,” said Sinclair dryly, and Abby choked out a laugh.

“That’s a good way of putting it,” she said.  “See you when you get here.”

She waited until the light went dark, indicating that Sinclair had disconnected, and then she switched hers off carefully – terrified of the risk of accidentally leaving the frequency open – and set it down.

“Is he gone?” Bellamy asked, voice muffled.  “Can I make you scream now?”

“I don’t know,” she laughed, “can you?”

And it turned out, in fact, that he could.

* * *

When Bellamy opened the back hatch of the Rover the sun was hard and gold in the sky, warm on their naked skin.   They were much too far from any Grounder settlements, or from Arkadia, for the risk of any human company, so neither of them bothered to get dressed immediately.  Instead, they ate their breakfast, walked around a little, tidied up the back of the Rover and then sat on a blanket in the grass to enjoy the sun.

“Four hours left,” said Bellamy heavily, out of nowhere, and Abby turned to look at him.

“You’re counting down until they get here,” she said, puzzled.  “Why?”

“Four more hours until I go back to being the monster that killed three hundred people,” he said, not quite able to look at her.  “Maybe Clarke was the smart one.  She doesn’t have to see them all every day.”

Abby took his hand.  “Bellamy, listen to me,” she said gently.  “You and Clarke are different.  You went through this together and you’re coping in different ways.  Clarke needed to . . . to not be around us all for a little while.  You hate it.  I hate it.  We both miss her.  It’s not what we would have wanted.  But you could have run, too, Bellamy.  You could have, and you didn’t.  You came home.  You planted roots.  You decided to stay.  That’s brave.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, and the edge of bitterness she’d heard in his voice last night threatened to creep back in, causing her heart to ache with empathy and affection.  “It’s not brave.  It’s just getting through the day.”

“Sometimes just getting through the day is an act of bravery,” she reminded him.  “You don’t give yourself any credit for what it means that you’re still alive, Bellamy.  That you’ve kept so many other people alive.  You’re only counting up the people that you lost, and not the ones that you saved.”  Her hand tightened around his, and he looked up to meet her eyes for the first time.  “You saved my life in Mount Weather,” she said softly.  “Start with that.  If you don’t remember anything else, remember that.  I’m alive _because of you._  Because you risked your life to save us.  I want you to remember that, every time you look at me.  You didn’t fail.  It was never going to be possible to save everybody.  It just wasn’t.   _You didn’t fail._  Look around at how many of your people you kept alive.  Those kids depended on you, and on Clarke, and the losses will always hurt, I know that, I understand that, but you have to remember how many lives you saved.”  She pulled him into her arms and felt him collapse gratefully against her, his head resting on her chest, as she stroked his back and kissed his hair.  “You’re so brave,” she whispered.  “I wish you knew that.  I wish I could make you see what I see.”

“Nobody else,” he started to say, then stopped himself, but they both knew what he was trying to tell her.

_Nobody else has ever seen me the way you do._

“You’re not going back there alone,” she whispered.  “I’m going back with you.  I’ll be there.  I’ll always be there.  No matter what happens – however the others look at you, or whatever Jasper Jordan says, or however long it takes before things are right again with Octavia.  You’re not alone, Bellamy.  I promise.  I’m always going to be on your side.”

When he kissed her, there was something else in it besides just desire.  It felt, to Abby, like _gratitude._  He kissed her like the things she was saying had finally had begun, in some small way, to get through.   _I’m right here,_ she told him silently as his mouth opened against hers and his powerful arms wrapped around her to lower them both to the soft ground, where their bodies lay pillowed on the sweet-smelling grass beneath their blanket.  If there was a way to tell him with her touch, with her body, the things he didn’t seem quite able to let himself hear through words, then she would find it.

But he was telling her something too, with his trail of kisses along her collarbone and the hand that slipped down to run light fingertips through the aching wetness between her thighs while his other arm wrapped her in a tight embrace.  He needed her.  She was _needed._ Not for the things she did – for being the doctor, the chancellor, the one keeping the whole camp running – but for who she was.

And it was no small thing, besides – at an age that wasn’t quite twice his but was closer to it than not – to have a young Greek god in the prime of his life be so overcome by desire that he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

She could get used to this.

Which was precisely the problem.

“Bellamy,” she murmured up at him, lifting his head from where he was nuzzling into her neck, and cupping his jaw in her hands.  “If we do it a second time, it’s just going to make it harder when we get home and have to stop.”

“Maybe we don’t have to stop.”

“We do,” she said, reluctance in her voice.  “You know we do.”

“Why?”

“Because we have to work together.  Because I'm the Chancellor and you're my guard.  If someone found out – “

“They won’t.”

“Bellamy – “

He shushed her with a soft finger over her mouth.  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.  “Right now.  In this moment.  Here.  Do you want me to stop?”

“But – “

“Don’t think about four hours from now,” he pleaded.  “Can we just live here for a minute?  Can we think about all of that later?”

Finally she nodded.  “Yes,” she said softly.  “We can think about that later.”

“And you don’t want me to stop?”

“Oh God,” she murmured, looking up at him, “no, honey.  No.  I don’t want you to stop.”

When he entered her, it was slow and gentle at first, almost tentative, as if he was afraid at any moment she would change her mind.  He was still skittish with her at unexpected moments, but her soft touch and murmured words soothed him into letting go.  “You feel so good inside me,” she whispered, and was rewarded by a dazzling, delighted smile, a little embarrassed and shy still but beaming with pride.  He pushed in a little deeper, and then a little deeper, dropping soft little kisses against her mouth and cheek and forehead as he went.  His low, grunting, hungry moans sent shivers down her spine, and so she told him that too.  “I like the sounds you make,” she murmured, her lips against his ear.  “I like the way you sound when you’re inside me.”

“Abby,” he groaned, his voice raw and raspy as he kissed her neck, and she could feel him swell harder and harder inside her, could feel her voice stirring him, rousing him.  Her hands slid down his sun-warmed skin, savoring the flex and release of muscle as his powerful back and taut, perfect ass rose and fell on top of her.  Everything about him was hard and smooth and strong and there was something about him that made her feel small and soft and delicate, but in a good way.  In a way that meant she could lie back and let go and set her burdens down for a minute and still feel safe. He couldn’t stop kissing her skin and touching her hair and staring down at her with eyes dazed with wonder, and as he drove deeper and deeper inside her, pressing her down into the soft grass, she felt herself begin to melt into him.  She’d been drawn to him, at first, out of some sudden, startling passion of generosity and tenderness, wanting to hold him, to give comfort, to make him feel good.  But it had taken her entirely by surprise, how good he made _her_ feel, too.

“I swear to God,” she breathed into the soft dark curls of his hair, as he pressed hot open-mouthed kisses against her throat, “I never saw this coming.”

Bellamy chuckled a little at this, and went still inside her to prop himself up on his elbows and look down into her face.  “I broke my leg once,” he said unexpectedly.  “When I was sixteen.  I was helping repair a light fixture and the ladder broke.  They brought me into Medical and you were the doctor on duty, and I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.”

Abby laughed, and flushed a little with something that was both flattery and embarrassment.  “This isn’t the _best_ time,” she observed dryly, “to remind me that I was already practicing medicine by the time you were sixteen.”

He grinned at her, charmingly unembarrassed.  “Well, you could take it that way,” he pointed out, “or you could take it the other way.”

“Which is what?”

“That teenage Bellamy would be pretty damn jealous of adult Bellamy right now,” he said, grinning with an irresistibly cocky delight, and any response she might have made was swallowed up in a sharp, startled cry as his hips began to rise and fall again.

“Well, adult Bellamy is doing him proud,” she gasped, struggling for breath as he drove deeper and deeper into her.  “Just don’t stop.”

“Are you close?” he murmured, leaning down to brush her hair out of her face and kiss her mouth lightly.  She couldn’t speak, could only nod.  His hand slipped down the soft skin of her belly and hips to make its way back between her thighs, and she gasped as he found her clit again.  “Do you like it,” he asked, almost shyly, “when I touch you here?” and there was something so vulnerable in it that she felt herself begin to dissolve.

“I like everything,” she whispered, trembling with pleasure.  “I like all of it.  Everything you do.  Everywhere you touch me.  You make me feel so good.”  She wrapped her arms around his back, fingers digging into his flesh as she arched towards him, mouth pressed against his hard strong shoulder.  “Everything you do to me feels good,” she breathed into his skin.  “Just don’t stop.”

His fingertip glided fast, tight little circles around the hard bud of her clit, sending shivers through her body, as his cock plunged in and out, and she could feel from the sudden tension in his body that he was close too.  But he was holding back, he was trying to swallow it down to make sure she came first, and it struck her again, this unexpectedly generous side of him she’d never seen before.  She liked this Bellamy, whose walls were all down.  Who trusted her enough to permit her to see him vulnerable, to see him laugh and cry and come.  Who longed so badly for someone to hold him to keep the nightmares at bay but had too much pride to ask for it, choosing to suffer in stoic silence instead.

She wondered how long it had been since someone had reached out and touched that Bellamy.  Maybe nobody ever had.

But she wanted to.  She wanted to hold him in her arms and not let go.

His cock and his hand sent dueling shockwaves through her body that collided in an overwhelming orgasm, causing her whole body to arch upwards off the blanket towards him as her desperate wild moans echoed around the clearing.  “Oh God,” she whimpered.  “Oh, Bellamy.” He smiled down at her, watching her come, stroking her hair, feeling her tremble beneath him and then soften back down against the cushion of grass.  "Oh," she murmured again as her body began, finally, to ease and still.  "That was . . . incredible.  That was so good."  She reached up, overcome with affection, and pulled him down towards her, cradling him against her breast.  "You make me feel so good," she whispered.  "Let me make you feel good too." 

But he didn't move.  She could feel, startlingly, his whole body growing tight and stiff, his hips slowing to a halt against hers, his cock still a bar of iron buried deep inside her.  His hands drifted off her body to clench into fists at his side.  “Bellamy,” she whispered reassuringly, stroking his hair, kissing his jaw, rubbing her hands comfortingly along his back.  “Honey, let go.  Let me make you come.”

But he shook his head, almost fiercely.  “Then it will be over,” he stunned her by saying, and her eyes met his in astonishment.

“Bellamy,” she said again, uncertainty threading her voice, but she wasn't sure how to answer him.

“Once we stop," he said in a heavy voice, "once we get dressed and pack up and go back to Arkadia, it's over.  This is all over."

She didn't argue, but took his face in her hands and guided him back to look at her.

"Was this a mistake?" she asked him gently.  "Should I not have -"

He shook his head.  "I didn't mean that," he said.  "Or, I only halfway meant that.  I just meant . . . " But he trailed off, his voice uncertain, and couldn't look at her anymore.

"Talk to me," she murmured, caressing his cheek.  "Please."

"I don't want to go back to being that other guy again," he said abruptly.

"What other guy?"

"The guy who killed innocent people," Bellamy said, almost snapping, as though he was suddenly angry (but not, she didn't think, at her).  "Kids.  People who trusted us.  People who helped us.  _That_ guy.  The guy everyone thinks is a murderer."

"Everyone doesn't think that, Bellamy."

“Maybe they should," he answered in a small voice, his eyes fixed on the ground, and the fog of sudden and crushing sadness hovering around him made a sharp little crack in her heart.

"Oh, Bellamy," she sighed.  "Sweetheart, don't do this to yourself."  But he still couldn't look at her, jaw clenched, eyes straining to hold back tears. 

Abby slid her arms up to grasp his shoulders, then wrapped her thighs tightly around him to hold herself in place and shifted him over onto his back, settling her hips in place to straddle him, holding him inside her.  He gasped through gritted teeth  at the change in angle and didn't pull away, but he still wasn't there.  She still didn't have him back.  So she leaned forward, took his face in her hands and guided it back to face her. “I see you,” she whispered, her voice pulsing with affection and warmth.  “I’ll always see you.  Even if the others did look at you that way – and they don’t, Bellamy, you’re the only one who believes that – but even if they did, _I_ don’t.  I see you.  And I’m going to be there.”  She reached down and took his hand in hers, interlacing her fingers with his, and lifted it to her lips to press a soft kiss on his scarred knuckles.  He closed his eyes, his jaw clenched, but she kissed his hand over and over without ceasing.  She didn’t say it out loud – that she knew this was the hand that had pulled the lever inside the mountain with Clarke – but still, he understood.  “You saved my life with this hand,” she murmured, and that got him to open his eyes, to stare up at her, some dark emotion on his face.  So she bent down, hair a silken curtain trailing over his skin, and rocked her hips against him, sending him deeper and deeper.  “Please,” she murmured, kissing his cheek and jaw.  “Let go, Bellamy.  Let me in.  Let me make you feel as good as you made me feel.”

“Abby,” he began uncertainly, and she could see the words he didn’t say as clearly as if they were written in the air above his head – that maybe he didn’t _deserve_ to feel good after everything that had happened.  But when she leaned forward, bracing herself on his chest and began to ride him, gently at first and then picking up speed, he didn’t resist.  

"Please come inside me," she whispered again.  "Please, just let go."  And as his hands drifted to cup her ass, he slowly began to respond, his hips rising up towards hers, over and over, harder and harder, until there he was, he was back with her again, he was connected to her again, his eyes locked on hers and his lips parted to catch his breath as their bodies rose and fell together.  She came again when he did, sudden and unexpected; the frantic stutter of his hips against hers as his cock plunged inside her was too much to resist.  He closed his eyes as the wave hit him, and she leaned down to capture his mouth in her own before sinking down against him.

“We’re almost out of time,” he said in a hollow voice as he took her in his arms, cradling her small, soft body against him.   

“Then hold me for a little while longer," she said, pressing her mouth against his chest.  "Just stay with me, right here."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> circa episode 3x04

**TWO MONTHS LATER**

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

She watched Bellamy drive, his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel, as the Rover's headlights swept ahead through the dark forest in front of them.  Kane had gone in the first Rover with the rest of the guards to get debriefed by Pike on the drive home, and Octavia had taken her horse and would likely beat them home by an hour.  “You should ride back with Bellamy,” Kane had said to Abby as they returned to the Polis boundary, and he hadn’t needed to elaborate further for her to know exactly what he meant.

Someone had to try and get through to him, and she was their best hope.

She could tell he expected her to talk the moment they climbed into their seats and watched the other Rover drive away, and he seemed relieved that she didn’t.  There was an almost imperceptible lessening of tension as he looked over at her and saw her staring straight ahead, not looking at him.  So he turned the key and started down the rough winding road back to Arkadia.

Abby didn’t like driving at night.  It wasn’t that she was afraid, exactly – Bellamy was a good, careful driver, and he seemed to sense that she didn’t quite trust the Rovers yet, so he was extra cautious when Abby was one of his passengers.  It was more to do with the way the headlights sliced through the darkness, carving out a path that then closed up ominously behind them as though it was never there, like the car was a tiny island of light adrift in a dark sea.  She could _sense_ the world out there beyond the walls of the Rover but she couldn't _see_ it, and the walls of silent black trees still unnerved her considerably.

On another night, she’d have suggested they stay over in Polis as planned, and drive back in the morning.

But she was the Chancellor of the Sky People, and Azgeda had just bombed Mount Weather off the face of the earth with dozens of their people inside, which meant she was urgently needed at home.

She ventured another glance at Bellamy, pale and grim in the driver’s seat, and took a deep breath, steeling herself for confrontation.  They’d decided – or rather, Abby had – that it wasn’t a good idea for them to be alone in the Rover together.  And then, after a routine physical became excruciating when Jackson left to go run an errand while she was pressing a stethoscope against Bellamy’s bare chest to listen to his (wildly, erratically pounding) heartbeat, she’d been forced to extend the ban to being alone _anywhere_ together.  She’d said no more, and she’d meant it, and they were struggling desperately to navigate their way out of desire into friendship, with mixed results.  It was no wonder that he’d turned to leaning more and more on Kane, with whom things were decidedly less complicated.  She’d been happy to see Bellamy begin to open up with him, and hoped maybe Marcus could be the safe space he needed.

And maybe he still could be, but not tonight.

Not after Bellamy had violated direct orders to take Pike and Octavia to Polis under Echo’s false pretenses, leaving Mount Weather without enough guards to stop an assassin.  Not after his friend Gina had died saving Raven and Sinclair, whom they had nearly lost as well.

Not with Mount Weather once again full of innocent dead, while Bellamy blamed himself for failing to stop it, and Clarke once again refusing to come home.

“If you’re looking for someone to blame,” she finally said, in a low voice, “you should start with me.”

He didn’t look at her.  “You can’t talk me out of this, Abby,” he said in an iron voice.  “You can’t make this better.”

“I’m the Chancellor,” she told him.  “The hospital was my idea.  The Farm Station settlement was my idea.  And the supply runs, too.  All those people were there because of me.  If it wasn’t for me, Mount Weather would have been empty.”

“Then Azgeda would have found someplace else to bomb,” said Bellamy dully, “and I would still have been the idiot who trusted Echo and got everyone killed.”

“You didn’t kill those people, Bellamy.”

“I may as well have.”

 _“Stop_ that,” she said fiercely, reaching out to touch his shoulder, and he flinched so violently that the car swerved.  He slammed on the brakes suddenly, switching off the engine and killing the headlights, and before she even knew what had happened he had jumped out of the car.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“I can’t do this with you right now,” he fired back, and vanished into the black night.

After a moment, she opened the door to the Rover and climbed carefully out, her eyes adjusting to the sudden shock of the headlights switching off and leaving her in total darkness.  She considered, for a moment, attempting to follow Bellamy, but decided against it.  He would come back for her when he was ready, and she doubted he'd leave her alone for long.  Not with the weight of all that darkness pressing in on her from all sides, in the heart of the forest, with the first Rover so far ahead of them that they'd lost sight of the taillights in the distance.  Not on the night she'd gotten her daughter back and then said goodbye to her again all at once. 

Bellamy would never do that to her, she told herself over and over, and she was right.  She heard him before she saw him, about twenty minutes later, as the telltale crackle of dried leaves underfoot startled her into looking up and straining her eyes into the thick wall of trees as one lone shadow untangled itself from the darkness and moved towards her.  The thick wall of clouds covering the moon drifted slowly apart as she watched him approach, and the faint white light made his already pale, strained face appear almost ghostlike.

"Bellamy," she said, and held out her hand, but he didn't seem to hear her.

“I don’t want a lecture,” he said in a raw, knife-sharp voice, “and I don’t want you to tell me all about how this isn’t my fault.  I don’t want you to make me feel better.  I don’t want you to talk.”  And then suddenly he was on top of her, rough and hard and just on the edge of violent, backing her forcefully up against the side of the Rover.  

“Bellamy,” she began warningly, but he ignored her, seizing her hips in strong hands and pressing his body up against hers so tight that she could hardly breathe.  His legs straddled her thigh, his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her waist, and his mouth crashed into hers.  But it wasn’t like before, it wasn’t Bellamy kissing her, it was some unrecognizable twisted version of him built out of self-loathing and fury, and the desperate way he clung to her as though she might be able to save him shattered her heart into pieces.  “Bellamy, stop,” she whispered as his mouth descended roughly to her neck, his hands slid up her waist and underneath her shirt to shove her bra up and free her breasts to his insistent grasp.  He pressed his hips hard against her, writhing, grinding, trying to manifest some kind of sensation, but it wasn’t working.  She could feel his cock through his jeans, still soft, refusing to cooperate no matter how hard he tried.  “Bellamy, _stop,”_ she repeated forcefully, pushing him away from her but clutching his hands firmly, to keep him from bolting.  “Stop.  You don’t want this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” she insisted.  “I would know if you did.  Your body is telling you it doesn’t want this.  Not here.  Not tonight, not like this.  Please, honey, just _stop._  Stop, and listen to me.”

“Abby, I swear to God, if you’re going to tell me not to blame myself – “

“You thought we were in danger,” she said gently, silencing him, and he looked away.  “Clarke, and Kane, and me.  You knew we were in Polis.  Someone you trusted told you we were in danger.  Bellamy, _any_ of us would have done what you did.”  He couldn’t look at her, and tugged a little to try and free his hands from hers, but she didn’t let go.  “You were trying to save us, Bellamy.  Echo lied to you.  She betrayed your trust.  You couldn’t have known.”

“Raven almost _died_ ,” he said, eyes welling with tears.

“But she didn’t.”

“But Gina did.”  Abby couldn’t argue with that.  “And all those Farm Station people.  And the food stores, Abby, and the supplies, we can’t support the whole camp without – “

“Bellamy,” she murmured, her voice soothing, her fingers caressing his knuckles as she held tightly to his hands.  “We’ll figure it out.  We’ll find a way.  We always find a way.  We’re going to get through this.  You’re going to get through this.  You have before.  You always want to believe that everything that goes wrong is your fault, but – “

“Oh my God,” he exploded, “will you just _stop talking_?”

Abby raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t snap at me,” she said mildly, and her refusal to fight back just angered him more.  “We’re all grieving, Bellamy, we’re all frightened, and you’re not the only one who wishes that Clarke had agreed to come home instead of staying in Polis inside the lion’s den with people I’m not sure we can trust.”

“Will you just _stop_?” he growled again, moving closer to her.  “Stop being so fucking _reasonable_.  Stop being kind.  Stop trying to understand me.  Stop trying to _fix_ this, Abby.  Can’t we please just stop talking for a minute and not think?  Don’t you want to _not think_?”

His hands dropped to her waist again, moving in close, but she shook her head.  “This isn’t what we do, Bellamy,” she said firmly.  “You and me.  This isn’t what we do.  We _talk_ to each other.  That’s what we do. I’m here, Bellamy, I’m right here.  _Please._ Please, just talk to me.”

“Abby – “

“How do you think you’d feel in the morning?” she asked reasonably.  “If I just unzipped and bent over right here and let you fuck me up against the Rover until you came so hard that for a minute or two you could forget about Mount Weather?  You think you’d feel good about that tomorrow?  No.  Mount Weather would still be there, and you’d hate yourself.  You’d hate yourself so much you’d start to hate me.  And I couldn’t bear that,” she said gently, her voice softening, lifting her hand to caress his cheek.  He closed his eyes, tears glittering on his eyelashes.  She could see the moonlight reflecting off them, like his face was scattered with fallen stars.  “I could never do that to us,” she whispered.  “It _meant_ something to me, that night.  I could never poison that by being with you again like this.  You want to disappear from yourself, but I can’t be with you if you’re not _here._ ”  She felt her own eyes begin to well up as she brushed the now freely-flowing tears from his cheeks.  “You’re angry, and guilty, and grieving,” she said tenderly.  “And those are real things that are happening to you.  You can’t deflect them.  You can’t fuck them away.  That’s not how this works.  You want to magically erase these memories, erase this day.  You want to _forget_.  You don’t want _me_.”

“I _always_ want you,” he said in a low voice, suddenly looking up and meeting her eyes, and this time when he moved closer to her it was different, it was softer, it was _real,_ because he was looking at her and his hands moved up to tangle in her hair and oh this was such a bad idea but she’d spent two months of cold lonely nights remembering the way he had felt inside her and she suddenly lost the will to push him away. “I always want you,” he said again, and this time when he kissed her, his body pressing hers against the Rover, everything was different.  This time when his strong thighs slipped in on either side of hers and his body began, slowly and gently, to grind against hers, she could feel him instantly begin to swell against her and felt an answering wetness between her own thighs in response. This time when his hands slid up the rounded planes of her belly beneath her shirt to reach her breasts, his touch was soft and the caress of his thumbs against her nipples made her gasp.  This time her mouth fell open beneath his and his tongue stroked insistently, hungrily against hers and she felt herself begin to melt and grow weak with longing.  She had tried so hard to stop wanting him, but her whole body felt electric in his presence.   _Yes, yes, yes,_ cried every nerve and muscle and bone in her body, pleading for relief, whispering how easy it would be, how close they were, just a pair of zippers and a few inches of distance and then she could have everything she wanted.   _Yes, yes, yes,_ cried her heart, remembering the dizzying sensation of wrapping Bellamy in her arms and looking up at him as he rose and fell inside her, as his wide awestruck eyes gazed down into hers with impossible affection.

_Yes, yes, yes._

“No,” she said, and placed her hands on his chest to push him gently, but firmly, away.

He stared at her for a long moment, eyes dark with emotion, before turning his back and climbing into the driver’s seat of the Rover.  She followed, climbing in beside him, and closed her eyes against the searing brightness as he switched the headlights on again.

“Bellamy,” she began tentatively, but he shook his head.

“Don’t,” he said roughly.  “Just don’t.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way back to Arkadia, silent tears streaking down both their cheeks.

When they finally pulled into the hangar and Bellamy switched off the engine, they sat in silence for a moment.

“That night in the Rover,” Abby said, staring ahead, not looking at him.  “The night that we – “

“I know what night you’re talking about.”

“There hadn’t been anyone else since,” she began, then faltered.  “You were the first since – “

“Since Jake,” he finished for her, and he stared straight ahead too.  “You hadn’t been with anyone else since your husband died.”

“It _meant_ something to me,” she said softly.  “You _mean_ something to me, Bellamy.  And I think, maybe, at least for that night, I meant something to you.”  He didn’t answer.  “I don’t think you should be alone tonight,” she said, a little tentatively, and he didn’t respond or even look at her but she could see his hands tighten on the steering wheel so she knew he knew what she meant.  “Come to my room,” she whispered.  “Come stay the night with me.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want me,” he muttered gruffly, still not able to look at her.

“I _always_ want you,” she said, and it startled him enough that he almost turned to look at her before recollecting himself and turning back away again.  “But I want you the right way.  The way it was before.”

“You want to hold me and kiss me and tell me I’m not a monster,” he said dully, “so that maybe for a few minutes you can convince me to believe you.”

“Bellamy – “

“That Bellamy is dead,” he said, and climbed out of the Rover, slamming the door behind him and vanishing into the dark before she could speak.

She waited all night, clinging desperately to hope.  Wanting to believe she could make him understand, wanting to believe it wasn't too late.

But he never came.

He avoided her for three days.  When she finally saw him again, he was sitting at the bar in the hangar, several drinks in and deep in conversation with Charles Pike.

She watched them, unseen, for a long time, and felt a cold prickle of foreboding shiver down her spine.

 _It's not too late,_ she whispered silently to him, but when he looked up for a moment and met her eyes, then looked back down again, she felt as though she'd just been slapped in the face. He had looked _through_ her.  As though he didn't even recognize her at all.

 _"That Bellamy is dead,"_ he had told her, and she swallowed back the sting of tears, desperate to convince herself it wasn't true.

* * *

**ONE WEEK LATER**

She’d lost all track of time.

She had returned from the hangar to her quarters as quickly as she could, closing the door behind her, where she sank down to the floor with her back against the wall and burst into tears. She drew her knees up to her chin and buried her head in her arms and sobbed and sobbed without ceasing.

Afternoon faded into evening outside the small high window in the wall of her quarters, but Abby didn’t see or care.  She didn’t even notice when, hours later, Marcus came to find her, slowly lowering himself to sit on the floor beside her.  She didn’t see him there until he had pulled her into his arms, cradling her close to his chest.

“It wasn’t about you,” he said gently.  “He didn’t do it to hurt you.  He’s just . . . lost.”  She buried her head in his shoulder and felt the seemingly unending well of tears inside her continue to pour forth as Marcus rubbed her back with comforting hands.  “He hasn’t been himself since Clarke left,” he said.  “You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.  I think seeing her in Polis like that only made everything worse.”

“I tried to – “

“I know you did,” he said.  “You’ve done everything you could.”

“He’s going to hate himself,” she said, voice shaky.  “He’s going to do something awful and he’s going to hate himself and I won’t be able to stop it because he can’t even _look_ at me.”

“We’ll get through to him,” he murmured, stroking her hair.  “We will.   _You_ will.”

“You don’t know that,” she sniffled miserably into his sweater.

“You got through to _me_ ,” he said gently, and she looked up, eyes streaked with tears.  Marcus gave her the ghost of a sad little smile, brushed the tears off her cheeks, and stood up.  “I’ll do it,” he said.

“No, I can – you shouldn’t have to – “

“I’ll do it,” he repeated.  “Stay here.  I won’t be gone long.”

“We can’t lose him, Marcus,” she said, and he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder as he turned to go.

“We won’t,” he promised her.  “We’ll get through.  You and me.  I promise.”

Then he closed the door behind him and made his way down the hall, with a heavy heart, to hand over the Chancellor pin to Charles Pike.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> circa episode 3x15

* * *

 

This is what Abby remembers.

* * * * *

_All she wants is for Clarke to join her in the City of Light._

_ALIE has promised that no one will harm her.  “She is the only one who knows how to operate the second version of my program,” she tells Abby.  “We need her.  We require her knowledge.  Once she has taken the key, Phase III will proceed as planned.”_

_Abby would like to go to her.  She would like to hold her daughter and kiss her yellow hair and whisper into her ear that everything will be all right, that all she needs to do is take the key and they can be together again.  They can be happy.  Clarke carries too much sorrow, and Abby’s love is fierce and strong, and all she wants is to see her baby girl smile again._

_But ALIE and Thelonious will not permit it._

_“We expected you to have better success with Kane,” says Thelonious, with something like displeasure in his voice.  “If you were unable to persuade him, you won’t be able to get through to her.”_

_“Clarke saw you at Arkadia,” ALIE reminds Abby.  “She knows you have taken the key.  She will be disinclined to trust you.”_

_So instead she watches from the tower._

_They walk in through the Polis gates, the Grounder King holding a knife to her daughter’s throat.  Clarke will be delivered to the throne room, to ALIE and Ontari and Thelonious, and after they have obtained the second version of the program and given her the key, Abby will be permitted to see her.  Not before._

_She stands at the window and looks down at the crowd gathered below, at Clarke’s golden hair shining in the chilly winter sun, and she smiles._ Soon, baby girl, _she tells her._ We’ll be together soon.

_Then, just for a moment, everything stops._

_There is a cluster of shapes moving through the crowd.  They too are dressed like Grounders, like Clarke, but they don’t wear it well.  Even if every Grounder in Polis was not living in the City of Light with her, Abby would know that these weren’t Grounders._

_“She brought them all with her,” says Abby.  The last Arkadians.  The last of her people who have not yet taken the key.  They are so close.  Phase II is almost complete.  They just need Clarke and these last seven –_

_Abby stops._

_There are seven of them, but she only recognizes six._

_ALIE tilts her head, puzzled, and regards Abby thoughtfully.  “Come away from the window, Abby,” says Thelonious abruptly._

_“Who is that one?” Abby asks, pointing down from the window.  “Who is he?  I don’t remember him.”_

_“Come away, Abby,” says Thelonious again, but she doesn’t.  She’s trying to remember._

_She knows there are memories that ALIE has locked away.  She lives inside the City of Light, in a beautiful white-and-blue-and-glass apartment at the top of a tower that looks out over the sea, and every morning she wakes up in bed next to Marcus and everything is peaceful and simple.  Jackson is here, and David Miller, and Kyle Wick, and she’s taken a liking to a Grounder girl named Emori, too – the one who helped them with John Murphy.  They go for walks and throw dinner parties and read books.  Every day is sunny and every night is clear and full of stars.  And the only thing that ALIE asks in return is that Abby not open the locked door._

_She tried, the first day she arrived.  Later, Marcus tried too.  But ALIE stopped them in time.  “These are your painful memories,” she told them both.  “You have come here to be protected from them.  I keep them locked up for your own safety.”_

_Abby knows that Clarke’s father was named Jake and he gave her the ring around her neck. She knows he’s gone, though the details are fuzzy.  She remembers lots of joyful moments.  She remembers being happy with him.  She remembers life on the Ark.  She knows there are things she doesn’t remember, things about Jake, but they’re not important, and anyway it’s safer with them on the other side of the door._

_But the young man with dark hair who isn’t a Grounder doesn’t live anywhere on this side of the door.  She doesn’t remember him at all._

_“What’s his name?” she asks again, and even though she trusts that ALIE is taking care of her, protecting her, even though she has absolute faith that ALIE’s choices are the right ones  . . . still, she wonders.  “Why can’t I remember him?”_

_“Because your memories of him caused you pain,” explains ALIE, as though it is the most obvious thing in the world._

_“All of them?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Come away from the window,” says Thelonious, more insistently this time, and this time they don’t give her a choice, her body does what ALIE orders._

_“Tell me his name.”_

_“That information is not relevant at this time,” says ALIE reassuringly, but for some reason Abby can’t let it go.  She dimly remembers, when she first arrived, before she realized how happy she could be here, that she resisted many times.  She has long since ceased resisting.  But suddenly she feels a small, sharp crack in the blissful dome of silence that wraps around her mind and shields it from all troubling things.  On the other side of the locked door, she hears something begin to shift and move and come to life, as though a memory is trying to get out._

_“Bellamy,” she suddenly says, and ALIE’s head snaps up sharply, her lovely expressionless face tilted to the side, the way it does when she receives new information.  “Bellamy,” she says again.  “His name is Bellamy Blake.”_

_She doesn’t remember anything after that._

* * *

 

This is what Marcus remembers.

* * * * *

_He’s making dinner when Abby returns._

_The kitchen in their apartment looks out over the water through a wall made entirely of glass.  ALIE told him when he arrived that she could give him and Abby anything they wanted, so everything is sunny and open, one big airy space with high ceilings and white walls and windows everywhere to let in the light.  Marcus doesn’t remember very much about the world he lived in before, but ALIE knew he would not want anything that felt cramped or dark or crowded, which must mean the place he used to live was like that.  He doesn’t remember much about anything from before; his locked room is much bigger than Abby’s, so he relies on her memories when his own are cloudy.  But she’s here, so he’s happy.  He doesn’t need very much to be happy.  ALIE has offered him anything he could ever want – if he pulls a book off the living room shelf, she asks if he would like a library down the street; if she sees him stop on a walk to look at a patch of flowers, she builds a park – but he always smiles and shakes his head.  He has Abby, and he feels no pain or sorrow.  That’s enough.  That’s all he needs.  It’s Abby who gets restless._

_Thelonious relies on Abby back in the other world – the one Marcus doesn’t like, the one he prefers not to return to – so she comes and goes, while he stays in the City of Light.  When she returns this time, he’s just putting the finishing touches on a perfectly roasted chicken (ALIE has taught him to cook) and is placing a pair of white china ramekins in the gleaming chrome refrigerator so the chocolate mousse can set while they eat._

_“Time to go,” she says, “ALIE needs us.”_

_"Us?" he asks, raising an eyebrow, and she nods.  This is new.  Since the day he took the key to the City of Light, Marcus Kane has not gone back.  Thelonious has not sent for him once._

_Something has changed._

_He just has time to turn off the stove before they both vanish into thin air and reappear outside The Citadel, where ALIE and Thelonious are waiting._

_“We have a mission for you,” says Thelonious. “There is an impending manual firewall breach in Arkadia.”_

_“We secured Arkadia,” says Abby, but he shakes his head._

_“Someone is on their way back."  
_

_“Raven Reyes has found a way to rewrite my code,” ALIE says.  “They are barricaded inside the temple, but one of the group escaped.  My code has been removed from the Ark mainframe, but Arkadia’s communication system could be manually re-networked to the Ark.  If someone in Arkadia manually accesses the comm system using the administrative password and shuts down the firewall, Raven can connect the second version of my program to the shuttle and send someone into the City of Light to breach the Citadel.  You need to get back to Arkadia and stop him.”_

_“Him?” asks Marcus, and Thelonious nods._

_“We believe she has sent Bellamy Blake,” he says – a name which means nothing to Marcus – and hands Abby a key._

_“We need him,” says ALIE, in her cool, clear voice.  “He will be able to provide vital information on Raven and Clarke’s plans.  Get him to take the key.”_

_“If he won’t?”_

_“We can’t afford a security breach,” says Thelonious.  “If he won’t take the key, you’ll have to kill him.”_

_Marcus does not know the name Bellamy Blake.  But something happens to him when Thelonious says those words.  He feels nothing, but it isn't the usual nothing.  It isn't a cool white blankness, it's a void.  It's a nothingness where_ something _used to be.  
_

_He looks at Abby._

_Abby looks back at him.  She feels it too._

_ALIE cocks her head quizzically, watching them both, and this is what sends the first flicker of worry through his mind.  If Bellamy Blake was unimportant, ALIE would not be watching him so carefully to see if he reacted to the name._

_“Get to the Rover,” says Thelonious abruptly.  “He took the other one and has a head start.  You’ll have to drive fast.”_

_* * * * *_

_“Who is Bellamy Blake?” he says to Abby as the Rover roars through the fields towards Arkadia, but she shakes her head._

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Why don’t we remember him?”_

_“Something happened,” says Abby.  “It was painful.”_

_“And we wanted to forget?” he says, brow furrowed, puzzling it through.  “Is that why we took the key?”_

_“It must have been,” she says reassuringly, though that doesn’t feel quite right to either of them._

_“I don’t want to kill him,” says Marcus.  “I don’t know anything else about him, but I know that. I  can’t kill him.”_

_“Don’t worry,” smiles Abby, patting his knee comfortingly.  “ALIE will tell us exactly what to do.”_

* * *

 This is what Bellamy remembers.

* * * * *

_Raven’s no dummy._

_“If you drain the fuel tank all the way,” she points out reasonably, “they’ll just go take one of the cargo trucks.  You gotta drain like a third of it out, enough so it looks full, and then make a tiny little puncture so it drains out as they drive.  With any luck it’ll run out at least a mile or two from Arkadia.  Buy you some time.”_

_“How do you know ALIE’s going to send someone in the Rover?” asks Harper.  “They could take horses, or pile a whole army in the transport vehicles.”  Raven doesn’t look up from the computer screen._

_“Because it’s what I would do,” she says absently, fingers whirring over the keyboard.  “They still don’t know what our plan is, and they don’t know where we are.  They know I’m close enough that I can hack into the shuttle wirelessly, but that’s all.  They’re preparing for war, and they want their army here.  No, they’re gonna send two, maybe three people back to Arkadia, and they’re probably gonna send people we know.  They’re not gonna want to kill you, Bell, they’ll want to chip you.  ALIE wants to know what I know.”_

_Bellamy nods, but Octavia still isn’t reassured._

_“Let me go with you,” she tells Bellamy.  “You need backup.  Raven, tell him he needs backup.”_

_“You are a warrior,” says Indra, cutting in before Bellamy can answer.  “This is the battleground, Octavia.  This is your place.”_

_Octavia looks like she might protest, but closes her mouth and drops down to the floor beside Jasper, trying to swallow back a scowl._

_It was Indra who found them this place.  There’s a secret passage that leads into, and out of, the temple where Becca’s shuttle is housed; and while the temple is crawling with ALIE’s soldiers, they have not found the passage yet, nor the old concrete bunker halfway between the temple and the outside walls where they have made their temporary hideout.  It’s cramped for this many people – the seven of them, plus Murphy and Indra, as well as Pike and Roan (who have made their stealthy way into the tower to find and retrieve Clarke) – but it’s soundproofed and hidden and it’s close enough to the temple for Raven to be able to access the remote data transfer between the shuttle and the Ark.  She can’t do anything with it yet, not until Bellamy reconnects the Ark to Arkadia, but she’s ready when he is._

_She clicks a few more times, then finally looked up at him.  “I’m sending you because there’s probably gonna be fighting,” she said.  “And I need Monty here.  But – “_

_“I can handle it, Raven,” he says for the hundredth time.  “You told me exactly what to do.”_

_“You can’t fuck it up.”_

_“I won’t.”_

_She hands him the long-distance walkie talkie and her hastily scribbled instructions.  He makes his goodbyes, gets a fierce hug from a still-anxious Octavia, then disappears out the passageway to the city limits._

_The Rover that Jaha’s army brought here when they abandoned Arkadia is parked on a flat stretch of road nearby.  It’s doors are unlocked and the key is in the ignition, because in a town full of zombies, who would steal it?  Bellamy drains the fuel tank to Raven’s specifications, makes a tiny incision, and watches as the dark liquid begins to trickle out drop by drop. It’s not enough, now, to raise any suspicion, but it’s a drive of several hours to Arkadia and with the fuel tank leaking the whole time, Raven’s plan should work.  With any luck, whoever they send after him won’t even make it to the gates before Raven shuts down the connection between their minds and the A.I.  With any luck, this will be over in three hours._

_But Bellamy Blake has never had that kind of luck._

_And he knows, before he even hears the Rover, who is going to be in it._

_The last time he saw Abby Griffin, she was standing in a hallway while Octavia and Lincoln stood guard, ushering everyone out the secret exit so they could make their way to the cave.  He watched Kane kiss her, hard and fierce, before disappearing through the wall, and the emotion inside his chest was made up of so many things at once that he could not name any of them._

_She did not kiss him – not with his sister twenty feet away – though something in her eyes seemed to indicate that maybe she wanted to.  But she had pulled him close in her arms and run her fingertips lightly up the back of his neck to slide through his hair and the fact that she could even bear his touch, after all the things he had done, overwhelmed him with such forceful emotion that he pulled away stiffly and abruptly to follow Kane without saying goodbye._

_She had always been kinder to him than he deserved._

_He hopes that Abby is still in there, somewhere.  If this all goes south, if she’s been sent there to kill him, he hopes at least she makes it quick._

* * * * *

_Raven’s instructions are clear to the point of patronizing (“If screen is black, turn on computer first”) and he feels more than a little proud of himself for how well he’s doing.  But she’s got this new super-genius brain now, which means even though it’s a lot of typing, it’s just following the steps she wrote down.  Click this.  Then type this.  Then this will happen.  Then type this.  He’s not as fast on the keyboard as he’d like, he has to go slow to get every letter and number right._

_Maybe it’s that, it’s the slow typing that erodes his head start.  Maybe he didn’t make as big a dent in the fuel tank as he thought he had.  Maybe she drove sixty miles an hour.  (Abby never learned how to drive, but ALIE can, which means Abby can now too.)  But regardless, he’s still one page of code away from done when he hears the Rover in the distance, coming over the hill._

_Everything in him wants to speed up, to race through this, to get out.  But if he types too fast he’ll make a mistake.  He’s not Raven.  He can’t improvise.  He has to hit every single key one at a time and check it against her notes.  He can’t screw this up.  He’s only got one shot._

_His luck holds, a little; he hears the Rover sputter and die (finally) from what sounds like a few hundred meters from the Arkadia gates.  It’s still faint.  She’ll have to come on foot.  Slower, which is good, but also she’ll be silent.  He won’t know which direction she’s coming from, the way he would if he could listen for the car._

_“How close are you?” comes Raven’s voice from the walkie-talkie.  “We’re ready over here when you are.”_

_“Dozen or so more lines to enter,” he tells her.  “But she’s here.”_

_“Who?”_

_“The Rover’s here,” he corrects himself.  “Whoever they sent.”_

_There’s a pause._

_“It might be someone else,” says Raven, a little doubtfully._

_“It might be,” he says, eyes glued to the keyboard, “but it won’t.”_

_Raven doesn’t say anything for a long time.  “I hope it won’t come to this,” she finally says, “and that we’ve cut her free before she reaches you.  But just in case – “_

_She falls silent again, and he grits his teeth, forcing himself not to get distracted.  Not with this much at stake.  He types in several more lines of code before she speaks again._

_“It’s not gone,” she says, surprising him, and he freezes just for a moment.  “The memories.  They’re all still there.  It’s just that, if they’re painful, ALIE sort of . . . puts a wall between them and you.  So you don’t quite think that they’re real.”_

_“You forgot Finn and Gina,” he says._

_“Yeah,” she says.  “But Jasper didn’t.  Jasper reminded me that they were real.  That was when it started to crumble.  Not all the way, but just enough.  If you need to buy yourself some time, keep her talking.  See if you can get her to remember you.”_

_“You forgot about Finn and Gina,” says Bellamy, “because what happened at the end was so painful that it erased all the happiness from everything that came before.  Right?  They disappeared because there was nothing left for you to remember about them that didn’t hurt.”_

_Raven didn’t say anything again for a long time.  He was three lines from the end before she spoke again._

_“She’ll remember you,” she tells him, but he shakes her head._

_“No,” he says dully.  “She won’t.”_

_He’s on the last line of code when he hears the footsteps._

Almost there, _he tells himself reassuringly – with more confidence than he feels – as he listens to the sound of boots on metal making their way to Raven’s lab.  He’s locked the door, of course, but ALIE knows how to shoot out a lock._

_Thirty more characters to enter._

_Then twenty._

_The first gunshot pings against the metal of the door, and he hears the knob rattle._

_Ten more._

_Another gunshot._

_Five more._

_Four._

_Three._

_Two._

_The door opens._

_“Please don’t touch that keyboard, Bellamy,” says the warm, pleasant voice of Marcus Kane.  “I don’t want to have to shoot you.”_


	5. Chapter 5

_ Forward slash. Return. _

_ Forward slash. Return. _

_ Forward slash. Return. _

That was all he had left.  He was so close.  Just two clicks and he would have been done, it would have been over, Kane would have been Kane again.  He wouldn’t be standing in Raven’s doorway with a rifle on his shoulder and his finger on the trigger, ready to fire if Bellamy moved.

“You look like you,” he said, keeping his voice level, almost casual, wanting – for some stubborn, petty reason – to show ALIE that he wasn’t afraid. 

“What did you expect?” Kane asked, raising an eyebrow, a half-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and it was  _ his _ smile, it was Marcus Kane’s real smile, and Bellamy knew that expression so well that he felt himself soften just the tiniest bit, letting his guard down just the tiniest, faintest bit, which was his first real mistake.  Kane moved a little further into the room, gun still drawn, but smiling, and Bellamy’s eyes followed him, which is how he ended up, without realizing until it was too late, unconsciously shifting his body to keep Kane in his line of sight, which meant he was no longer looking at the door.

She was quick, and he felt her before he saw her.  He could always sense when Abby Griffin was in the room.  By the time he turned around, she had stepped between him and the computer. 

She wasn’t holding a gun, but she didn’t need one.  Bellamy knew instinctively how ALIE would use her.  Kane would threaten to shoot Bellamy, and if that didn’t work, he’d threaten Abby instead.

And Bellamy would have to let him, because if he did not click  _ forward slash, return _ before ALIE’s army found Raven and the others and shut the link down, everyone he loved would die.

“I don’t think we need that,” she said pleasantly to Kane.  “Why don’t we just talk for a minute.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you, ALIE,” he said roughly, and from the way Abby’s eyes flicked up and to the left just for a minute, he knew ALIE was in the room with them, whispering instructions into both their ears, telling them what to do.

“Bellamy,” she said, her voice low and gentle, and he wasn’t stupid, he knew she was executing instructions ALIE was providing her, he knew that he was going to die here today and the only question was if it happened after  _ forward slash, return _ or before, and he knew that ALIE sent these two for a reason, because if she had access to Abby’s memories then she knew Bellamy would never want to hurt her.

But still. 

He’d missed that voice.

“Listen to me,” she went on, and God help him, he did, turning slowly around (hands raised, to keep Kane from firing) so he could see her face.  It was bruised, her hair loose and tangled like he remembered she used to wear it, the way it was the very first time he saw her on the ground.  He wanted to run his fingers through it.  He wanted to kiss the bruise on her cheekbone.  He wanted to kill whoever had done that to her.  He wanted to run his thumb along her soft, silken lower lip until her mouth parted and then press his own against it until they both lost their breath.

But he had seen this once already.  He had watched what ALIE did to Raven.  Raven, who loved them all so much, who they would all have crawled through hell on their hands and knees to protect.  Raven, who had risked her life for all of them so many times.  Raven, who he had cradled in his arms as they watched Clarke step away from Finn’s lifeless body, staring in horror at the blood on her hands. 

But still, the things she had said to them.  The things she had done.  The real Raven inside hadn’t been strong enough to stop it.

And it wasn’t Raven whose heart he had broken so badly that she had lost all her memories of him.

Because he knew, all the way down to his bones, as he looked down at Abby Griffin’s lovely, smiling face, that she had absolutely no idea who he was.

* * * * *

_ “I’m the reason,” Raven says to Bellamy, sitting down next to him as he stares wordlessly into the fire while the others slept.  “Abby tried to save me.”  _

_ He doesn’t answer.  He’s still thinking about Clarke’s words, about the impossible, unbelievable notion of an Abby Griffin who would stand by and let ALIE’s army shoot at her daughter.  _

_ He’s still thinking about how he could hardly bear to even give her a real goodbye, about how he’d wanted to kiss her and didn’t, about how different things might have been for all of them if he had stayed in Arkadia too. _

_ Raven peels back the bandages on her arms so he can see the long, clean line of a scalpel wound up each forearm.  “I was bleeding out,” she says.  “That’s why she took the chip.  Otherwise ALIE would have let me die.  She didn’t want the chip, Bellamy.  Maybe that means inside, somewhere, she can still fight.” _

_ “Maybe,” he says flatly. _

_ “Clarke saved me,” Raven says firmly.  “She’ll find a way to save her mom.” _

_ And she doesn’t mean it to wound him, but it does. _

I’m a monster, _ he thinks to himself, staring into the flames and fighting back tears.  Clarke is his best friend and this is her mother and yet he’s only grieving for himself.  Abby Griffin isn’t his and she never will be.  Abby Griffin doesn’t belong to him.  She belongs to Clarke, Raven should be comforting Clarke, Bellamy has no right to ask for comfort, no right to worry about her like this, and yet he can’t push Raven away because Raven shared all of Abby’s memories which makes her the only person in the whole world who knows. _

_ “We’ll get her back,” says Raven, but Bellamy doesn’t look up. _

_ Because he knows the truth: that maybe, if they’re very lucky, Clarke will get Abby back. _

_ Bellamy never will. _

* * * * *  


“It’s just us,” said Abby gently, her voice low and sweet and not frightening at all.  “There’s no army coming, Bellamy.  Either yours, or ours.  We’re all on our own here.  So we can just talk.  Okay?  No guns,” she said, nodding to Kane, who lowered his rifle just enough that Bellamy could breathe again.  “Let’s just talk.”

“I’ve seen this before, ALIE,” said Bellamy grimly, “I saw what you did to Raven.  I’m not scared of you.”

“It’s not ALIE,” Abby countered, regarding him with wide, pleading, innocent eyes.  “It’s me.  Bellamy, it’s me.  It’s Abby.”  She reached up and stroked his cheek with soft, gentle fingers, and it took every ounce of restraint in his body not to close his eyes and lose himself in it.

It had been so long since she touched him.

“I’m still Abby,” she whispered, “I’m still  _ your _ Abby,” and her sweet smile went straight to his heart, and he couldn’t help himself then, she was a magnetic force pulling him close, and before he knew it she was in his arms.

“Bellamy,” she sighed as she pulled him close, resting her face against his chest, burrowing close.  “I missed you so much.”  And he knew it wasn’t real, he knew it was an illusion, but it felt so good to pretend like it was true.  “I don’t like being apart from you,” she whispered, her hands sliding around his waist.  “We want you with us.  We miss you.  Please.”

“I’m not taking the key, Abby,” he said, but she didn’t answer.  Her hands slipped under the hem of his t-shirt and suddenly her palms were pressed flat against his back, warm and insistent, skin against skin, and the last time she had touched him there she’d been smiling up at him from a blanket on the grass as he made her come, and even though he knew that was exactly what ALIE wanted him to be thinking about he still couldn’t stop himself.

“It could be like before,” she whispered, her mouth trailing kisses up his neck.  “Everything feels good in the City of Light, Bellamy.  Let me take your pain away.  Please.  I just want you to be happy.”  She nibbled at his neck, her breath warm against his ear, and he hated himself for how swiftly he roused to her, because it wasn’t at all like being kissed by ALIE, it didn’t feel like a tactic, like a strategy, it felt like that night in the Rover, which was the worst violation of all, because he wasn’t sure how long he could actually resist.

She stepped back, then, and in one swift movement she pulled her sweater over her head.

“Abby,” he said uncertainly, looking from her to Kane, whose face was expressionless.  He watched her hands drop down to the waistband of her jeans to softly unfasten the buttons.  “Don’t,” he told her with more assurance than he felt.  “It won’t work.”

“I want you,” she whispered.  “I’m right here.  I’m so close.”  She pulled her jeans down just far enough to reveal the jut of hipbones beneath threadbare black cotton.  “Kiss me,” she said.  “Kiss me, and you can have me.  Right here.  Right now.” 

Then she took a key out of her pocket, set it on her tongue, and smiled, beckoning him to her.

Inviting him to kiss it out of her mouth.

He had never wanted anything more in his life.

_ Forward slash.  Return. _

_ Forward slash.  Return. _

Everyone was counting on him.

“How did your husband die, Abby?” he asked her, and he felt her stiffen inside his arms, pulling away so she could look up at him. 

“Bellamy, I promise you,” she said.  “I’m still me.”

“How did he die?”

Her eyes flicked somewhere over his shoulder – ALIE was feeding her answers.  “He was arrested and executed on the Ark,” she recited, the words seemingly without meaning.

“Arrested by Marcus Kane,” said Bellamy, hating himself for it, but out of other ideas, and it worked.

Abby’s brow furrowed in puzzlement, looking from ALIE to Kane and then back again.  Kane looked confused too.

“No,” said Abby uncertainly.  “He loves me.  I love him.”

“Yes,” said Bellamy.  “He does.  You do.  That doesn’t change what he did.”

“His name was Jake,” said Abby, fingering the ring around her neck.  “I remember that his name was Jake.”

“Jake was my friend,” said Kane, but in the same flat tone Abby had used before, as though ALIE were feeding him lines of dialogue.

“And you arrested him for treason,” said Bellamy.  “And then Thelonious floated him out the airlock.”

“Thelonious did?” Abby asked in genuine astonishment, turning around to stare wildly at Kane, and it was enough, it was the opening he needed, because her back was to the keyboard and he wouldn’t get another chance.

_ Forward slash.  Return. _

The screen lit up, lines of code scrolling past his eyes impossibly fast.  “Bellamy, no!” screamed Abby, but it was too late.  Raven was inside the Citadel.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply, and raised his hands in surrender as Kane pulled the trigger.


	6. Chapter 6

_It's over._

_He’s patched Raven into the network so she can get Clarke into the Citadel.  He hit the last two keys.  He did the job she sent him home to do.  And there’s a part of him that isn’t sorry he’s about to die at Kane and Abby’s hands.  Justice, maybe, for the things he’s done to them.  For siding with Pike and voting against Abby for Chancellor.  For getting Kane arrested and almost killed.  For trying to right a wrong by turning Pike over to the Grounders, leaving Abby behind unprotected to be brainwashed by Jaha.  He failed to save Abby from the City of Light, and then they used her to get to Kane.  Everything they’ve done while under ALIE’s influence is_ his _doing.  On_ his _conscience.  He didn’t know – none of them could possibly have known – but he feels it, anyway._

Just kill me, _he thinks to Kane wearily, and as the muzzle of the rifle lifts up to his heart, he doesn’t even flinch.  Marcus Kane is the cleanest shot in Arkadia.  At least it will be quick._

Goodbye, _he calls silently to Abby, and closes his eyes to let it happen._

_Then several things happen at once._

_First, a shrill, high-pitched electronic wail, like a speaker shorting out, shrieks through the radio that he hasn’t switched off.  It’s not coming from his end, it’s coming from Raven’s._

_Second, Kane pulls the trigger on his rifle._

_Third, Kane gasps and winces and doubles over, as though at the mercy of a violent pain somewhere in the base of his skull.  His aim falters as the rifle drops out of his hands and he sinks to the ground, screaming in agony._

_Fourth, Abby screams too, and he whirls around to see her start to fall.  He catches her in his arms and lowers her slowly to the ground.  She’s clutching her head in her hands, tears streaming down her face, and there’s nothing he can do, he can’t make it better, all he does is hurt her over and over, and he’s so distraught by her misery that until he hears her sob “Bellamy, please, make it stop” he overlooks the most important thing._

They’re feeling pain.

_His heart begins to race in his chest.  Maybe Raven really did it.  Maybe the connection between ALIE and her captive human minds is really beginning to fray. Maybe –_

_“You’re bleeding,” exclaims Abby in horror, and that’s when the fifth thing happens, which is that Bellamy realizes for the first time that Kane didn't miss.  
_

_The shock that projected him from feeling his own injury snaps off like a lightswitch the moment the sound stops; the silence causes both Kane and Abby to drop to the ground, unconscious.  He wants to rouse them, he wants to wake them up, but suddenly his entire body is nothing but pain and he held out as long as he could but there’s a white-hot fire burning in his side and he is probably dying and there’s nothing left to do but let his body crash down on this cool metal floor and let it happen.  He has faith in Clarke and Raven.  He got them as far as he could but he’s done now._

I’m sorry, O, _he calls out to her across the miles, hoping she will hear him and know._ I’m sorry.  I tried.

_Then he closes his eyes, and the world goes black._

* * *

 

This is what ALIE remembers.

* * * * *

_The firewall has been breached from inside the Arkadia mainframe.  Bellamy Blake has re-established a communications link between Arkadia and Mecha Station._

_There is an intruder inside the City of Light._

_This has never happened before.  No emergency protocols for this situation exist inside her programming.  Her people loan her their eyes and ears as she watches Clarke Griffin make her way to the Citadel.  ALIE can feel Clarke but she cannot control her.  Someone is inside her code, altering it, changing it, removing obstacles as she goes._

_Raven Reyes is inside her._

_Raven Reyes has accessed ALIE's core data code and is performing manual alterations, and no evasive maneuvers or stratagems can block Clarke's way for long.  If ALIE sends her army, Raven builds a wall around them.  If ALIE shatters the bridge to the Citadel, Raven rebuilds it in moments.  ALIE has never encountered a mind as powerful as Raven's and she wants it.  She wants Raven back inside the City of Light.  "Find her," she commands Thelonious, and then the unthinkable happens._

_Raven deletes his code from the City of Light._

_Somewhere in Polis, a kneeling figure sinks slowly to the ground, unnoticed by any of the others, whose eyes remain closed as if in prayer.  But inside the City of Light, ALIE lets out a sharp, low gasp and doubles over, as if in pain.  No one notices.  None of the men and women passing her on the street stop to look at her.  They all continue on their way._

_ALIE is no longer entirely certain how to proceed without a system administrator.  First there was Becca, then she was quarantined until Thelonious freed her.  She hesitates, in the middle of the sunny street, looking out over the sparkling blue water, her head tilted to the side as she scans through a range of possible outcomes to evaluate an alternate strategy._

_But she waits too long._

_Clarke Griffin is here.  Clarke Griffin is inside The Citadel._

_By the time ALIE finds her, Clarke is racing for the kill switch._

_“Shoot Bellamy Blake,” she tells Marcus Kane, out loud, so that Clarke will hear, and one ALIE watches Clarke's hand falter as another ALIE watches Kane obediently raise his gun._

_"This is your last chance," ALIE says to Clarke._

_"No," says Clarke, "it's yours."  Then she slams her hand down on the switch, and the world goes black._

* * *

Pain.

Pain everywhere.

Pain radiating hot and sharp from the side of his abdomen and echoing throughout his entire body.  Pain in his back and shoulders, pain in his thigh and knee.  Pain light and quick on the side of his cheek, as though a hand were slapping him, over and over.

Pain raw and desperate and fierce as a weight pressed down against the white-hot burning in his side.

He couldn’t stop himself from crying out then, and his eyes flew open to see a soft brown blur hovering just at the edge of his vision.

“Oh, thank God,” said Abby, her voice throbbing with relief, and before he could speak or even breathe, she was kissing him.

The gray fog inside his brain began to slowly coalesce into something resembling memory – the keyboard, the gunshot, the chip in Abby’s mouth – and he recoiled from her in horror, seizing her shoulders roughly and pushing her away.  “I’m not taking the key,” he said hoarsely, "you'll have to kill me."  But she shook her head.

“No, baby, no,” she murmured, her hands in his hair, on his cheek, stroking and caressing him.  “No, I’m me.  ALIE’s gone, Bellamy.  She’s gone.  Raven cut the tether, and Clarke hit the kill switch.”

“How do you know about Clarke and the kill switch,” he asked suspiciously, “if you’re not connected to ALIE?”

“You left the radio channel open,” she said.  “I’ve been on with Raven for hours.  They’re all okay,” she whispered, stroking his cheek.  “All your friends.  Everyone made it.”

“Octavia?” he asked in sudden panic, struggling to sit up, and she smiled, tears streaming down her face.

“Octavia’s okay,” she promised him. “Everyone’s okay.  Bellamy, you saved us.  You saved everyone.”  She kissed his forehead, her hands soft and gentle on his skin.  “You were willing to let us kill you, to save everyone,” she whispered.  “We could have lost you.  I could have _lost_ you.”

 _“Kane,”_ he exclaimed suddenly.  “Oh God, Kane.”

“Still unconscious, but fine,” said Abby, soothingly, and she pointed to a spot behind Bellamy where she’d laid Kane out on the floor with his jacket rolled up beneath his head.  “Breathing just fine, vitals stable.  If it goes on more than another few hours, then we can worry.   But I suspect disconnecting from the A.I. takes everyone differently.”

Bellamy tried to turn to get a closer look at Kane, then winced in agony as the movement of his torso pulled at the raw open wound on his side.

“Well, at least I know I didn’t take the chip,” he muttered irritably, and let Abby lower him gently back to the floor.

“No,” she said in a strange voice, “you didn’t,” and he knew from the way she couldn’t look at him that she remembered everything too.

“It wasn’t you,” he said reassuringly.  “It was ALIE.  That’s how she works.”

“It’s not that simple,” Abby whispered.  “It was me, too.  Some of it was me.”

“Abby,” he said gently.  “You didn’t even remember who I was.”

She looked up at him sharply, startled, almost afraid, and even if she had tried to deny it he would have known from her panicked gaze that he’d guessed correctly.

“I hurt you so much,” he said.  “So many times.  Over and over.  And then when you took the chip, I just disappeared.”  He gave a sad little half smile.  “ALIE knew,” he said.  “She knew the only way for you to have peace – to be happy with Marcus – would be if she erased me completely.”

Abby stared at him.  “Oh God,” she murmured, horror in her voice.  “Oh God.  You really think that.”

“All I’ve ever done is hurt you, Abby,” he told her heavily.  “I started all of this.   If I had listened to you that night in the Rover, when we were coming home from Polis – “

“Bellamy, _stop.”_

“ . . . but I didn’t, I listened to Pike instead.  I chose Pike.  I didn’t choose you.  I turned my back on you.  That’s how all this happened, Abby, that’s where all of this started.”  He looked up at her, at the stricken look on her face, at the tangle of her hair tumbling over her shoulder as she leaned down over him, at the tracks of tears coursing down her cheek, and he was suddenly so tired.  He couldn’t look at her anymore.  “I hurt you,” he said again, in a faint, small voice, and closed his eyes.

“I don’t care,” said Abby unexpectedly, her hand gentle and cool against his cheek, caressing his skin, soothing him, and his eyes snapped open again.

“How can you not care?”

“Because you’re _alive,”_ she murmured.  “How can you not realize that’s the only thing that matters?”

“Abby – “

“I’ll say it out loud,” she whispered, “if I have to say it.  But surely by now, you must already know.”

He pulled away from her a little, sitting back up again, and managed to maneuver himself to brace his back against the wall.  It felt safer, suddenly, to have a little distance between them.  He felt a tight soreness on his abdomen and looked down to realize that while he had lain there unconscious on the floor, she had cleaned and dressed and bandaged his wound, a heavy patch of gauze adhered firmly with surgical tape over the place where Kane had shot him.  She’d taken his shirt off too, now soaked with blood and entirely useless, though he was unable to avoid noticing that she’d put her own back on.

“They wouldn’t let me see Clarke,” she began, and he looked up, startled.  “Thelonious and ALIE.  At least, not right away.  They didn’t trust me.  I hadn’t been persuasive enough with Kane.  So I was locked in the tower, watching out the window as Clarke and Roan came into the square.  And I saw all of you moving through the crowds.  I saw Monty and Octavia and Jasper, I saw Harper and Bryan and Miller, and I knew who they were.  I hadn’t forgotten. There were bits and pieces I didn’t remember, but I knew exactly who they were.  But you . . .”  She shook her head.  “I knew I was _supposed_ to know you, I mean I knew that you weren’t a stranger, that you were real, but I couldn’t _remember_ anything.  ALIE and Jaha kept trying to pull me away, but I was fighting so hard to remember . . . And it was the same for Marcus.  We kept asking over and over, ‘Who is Bellamy Blake?  Who is Bellamy Blake?’  But the longer ALIE wouldn’t tell us, the more it haunted us.  She didn’t give me back any of it until she wanted me to try to get you to take the chip.  When I – “  She stopped suddenly, and couldn’t look at him anymore.  “I didn’t remember who you were,” she murmured, staring down at the floor, arms wrapped around her knees with her chin resting on them, like a child.  “Who we were to each other.  But the wanting you – that was real.  And I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling, tears starting down her cheeks again.  “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t strong enough, to keep her from turning that against you.  It feels like such an unimaginable violation of those memories.  Of what happened between us.  But I wasn’t strong enough to stop her.”

“You couldn’t fight her,” he said dully.  “You couldn’t fight her if you didn’t know who I was.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said urgently, and she crawled over to where he sat, parting his thighs to kneel between them, her hands resting on his shoulders.  “Bellamy, listen.  It isn't what you think.  I didn’t forget Pike.”

He looked up at her, startled.  “What do you mean?”

“You think I forgot you in the City of Light because I hated you,” she said in a low voice.  “Because you had caused me so much pain that I had to block you out.  But that’s not how it works, Bellamy.  Because I remembered Charles Pike.  When I saw him walk into Polis with Marcus, I knew immediately who he was.  I knew he was an enemy, and that ALIE wanted us to eliminate him.  I didn’t remember why, because she didn’t _need_ me to remember why, but I never forgot who he was.  But when I saw you, there was nothing.”  She leaned forward, her hands on his face, desperate, pleading, trying so hard to get him to hear her, to get her words through.  “Hate is easy,” she explained.  “ALIE can slice it right out.  Pike was easy.  There were plenty of memories left that meant nothing.  It cost her nothing to let me remember who he was.  And Clarke and Jake, it was different with them, because we were happy for such a long time, until we weren’t.  She just chopped off the ending.  It was easy.  She didn’t have to make me forget them, she could just extract the things she didn’t want me to know.  But she couldn’t do that with you,” she whispered.  “She had to take you away from us because you were dangerous.  It wasn’t to protect us from painful memories, Bellamy, it was to protect _herself._   _That’s_ why she locked you away.”

“Because I hurt you both so badly that there were no memories left that weren’t tainted for you to hold onto.”

“No,” she said.  “Because you were the only person where the pain and the love were so tightly intertwined that ALIE couldn’t pull the threads apart.  So she had to take all of it away.  Because she couldn’t risk either of us remembering you.”

Bellamy’s heart stopped beating.  “The what?” he croaked out, his mouth suddenly dry.  “The pain and . . . . and the what?”

“She thought she was safe, because Marcus and I were together,” Abby told him.  “That if both of us were inside, and both of us loved each other, that we would be docile.  That we wouldn’t try to break out.  But she didn’t know,” she whispered, moving closer to him, caressing his cheek, resting her forehead against his.  “She didn’t know because _I_ didn’t know.  But every time I thought about you, it pulled me a little further away from her, until she had to wipe you from my memories completely.  You were my anchor,” she said softly.  “You were the light in the window, calling me home.”

“Abby – “

“I love you, Bellamy,” she said in a low voice.  “I love you, and I didn’t even know.”

 _“How?”_ he asked her desperately, hoarse with something like panic.  “How is that even possible?  After all the things I’ve done, how could you ever – “

“Those were things you _did_ ,” she said.  “They aren’t who you _are_.”

“Kane went to jail because of me,” he said miserably, pressing his eyes closed with tears.  “He would have _died._  Because of me.”

“Bellamy,” she said gently, “don’t do this to yourself.”

“Kane should have run me over with that Rover,” he muttered, “and taken Pike to the Grounder blockade.  Lincoln would be alive if he had.  And maybe the others too.  You could have stopped Jaha, too.  Before it was too late.  If you were still the Chancellor, Jaha would never – “

“Bellamy, stop,” said Abby, caressing his clenched jaw with her soft hand, soothing him, comforting him.  “It’s over.”

“So many people are dead because I trusted Charles Pike.”

“A lot of people trusted Charles Pike,” observed Abby.  “Enough to win an election.  A lot of people followed him to attack the Grounders.  A lot of people supported his decision to lock Nyko’s people up.  To arrest Lincoln and Marcus.  Nobody’s saying it wasn’t a mistake, Bellamy – you’ve made mistakes, we all have – but you’re taking this all on yourself.”  She stroked his cheekbone with her thumb, soft and soothing.  “I told you once,” she said softly, “that you weren’t a monster.  That the cost on your soul from all those deaths at Mount Weather was the way that you know you’re still a good man inside.  A monster wouldn’t feel anything for those people.  And it’s the same now.”

“I voted against you,” he said.

She nodded.  “Yes,” she said.  “I know.”

“You were good to me,” he murmured.  “That night in the Rover.  You were kind.  Nobody else had ever – but I still, I trusted Pike, I wasn’t there when you needed me – I let you down, Abby, I hurt so many people, I hurt _you_ – and after you were so . . .”  He trailed off, swallowing down a hollow ache inside his chest.  “You’re better to me than I deserve,” he finally said, and Abby shook her head.

“That’s not how it works,” she insisted, and Bellamy couldn’t stop the tears from spilling over then.  So Abby cradled his face in her hands and leaned in and pressed her mouth against his temples, his cheekbones, his jaw, her lips brushing against the hot salt tears streaming down his face and kissing them away, over and over and over again.  “I love you,” she breathed into his skin.  “I love you, I love you, I love you.”  She slid her arms around his neck, hands tangling into his hair, holding him close, offering him the strength and warmth of her body as comfort, but it just made the tears flow harder.  He didn’t deserve her, didn’t deserve _this._ She had broken him open that night in the Rover and held him all night in her arms, she had shown him a kind of tenderness he’d never felt before, and she’d made him feel better than any woman ever had in all his life.  And yet it hadn’t stopped him from betraying her.  It hadn’t felt like a betrayal, then, it had felt like an election; but he didn’t know then what he knew now.  He’d had no idea it would end here, on the floor of Engineering, with a bullet wound in his side and Abby’s hands in his hair, on the day he thought the world was ending.

“Wait,” he said suddenly, pulling back from her embrace just far enough to look into her eyes.  “Wait.”

“What?”

“It can’t be right,” he murmured, a hollow sadness echoing in his voice. “I wish it was.  I wish it could be.  But it doesn’t fit.  The pieces don’t fit.”

“Why?”

“You can’t have forgotten me because you . . . because of how you feel about me,” he said uncertainly, still not quite ready to say it.  “That can’t be it.  Because Kane forgot me too.”

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding as though it were obvious.  “Kane forgot you too.”

“But what – “

“That’s something you’ll need to discuss with him when he wakes up,” she said.

“But he,” Bellamy began, thoroughly confused.  “You and he – “

“Yes.”

“But you and . . . you and me – “

“Yes.”

“How – “

“I was surprised too,” she said, a smile slowly dawning on her tear-streaked face like the sun breaking through clouds.  “I didn’t know I was the kind of person who could do that.  That it doesn’t take anything away, from either of you.  But it doesn’t.”

“So if I,” he began, faltering a little.  “If I . . . if I said it.  It isn’t – I wouldn’t be – “  He couldn’t speak, but looked helplessly over at the still, unconscious Kane.

“Are you asking if it would be a betrayal of Marcus for you to say it back to me?” she asked him softly, and he nodded.  She closed her eyes unexpectedly, tears streaming down her cheeks again, but when she opened them again she was smiling.  “No,” she said softly.  “No, sweetheart, it’s not.  But I love you so much for asking.”

“I love you too,” he said, startling himself far more than her, and then her mouth was on hers and there was no more talking for a long time.

It was somehow exactly like before and completely different.  She held him close and slowly, gently lowered him back down to the ground, careful to disturb his wound as little as possible, and curled up into the uninjured side of his body, her mouth warm and fierce and hungry on his.

His thoughts were in chaos.  There was the overwhelming rush of how good it felt to kiss her again, the exultant jubilation of knowing that the war was over, that they had won, that the people he loved were safe.  There was the guilt, still, and the pain he’d caused, wounds he suspected would take longer to heal than the hole in his side or the bruise on her face or whatever had happened to Kane’s wrists.  And there was Kane himself, there was something heavy and new taking shape inside Bellamy, some strange magnetic force that wouldn’t let him forget the man lying on the floor as though he were locked into Kane’s orbit.  There was the strange intensity in Abby’s voice when she told him that Kane had forgotten him too, and there was the way he had been ready to let Kane shoot him because it felt right, somehow, like it was the only possible way to atone.  And there was the way Kane had smiled at him, that sweet familiar smile, shining out at Bellamy from behind the barrel of a rifle, and the knowledge that Kane's smile would be the last thing he ever saw, and how startlingly that knowledge had hurt.

But more than anything else, he wasn’t proud of it but he couldn't push it away either, there was the heat rising through his body and the fierce, frantic tug of need pulling her towards him.  Even after all of this, she was still the most desirable woman he had ever known in his life.

“Abby,” he whispered hoarsely, and she looked at him with wide, wild eyes.

“I want to,” she breathed, answering the question he hadn’t been bold enough to ask.  “Bellamy, I want to so badly.  Please.”

“Not here,” he said in a low voice.  “Not on the floor in Engineering.”

“We’ve only ever done it on floors,” she murmured back, and he could hear the beginnings of a laugh in her voice, Abby was laughing, Abby was _happy,_ and suddenly everything in the whole world felt possible.

“Help me up,” he said to her, struggling to his feet, and she instantly leaped up to wrap her arm around his waist and support him as his stiff bones and muscles began to slowly cooperate.  “Ow, ow, ow,” he complained with every step, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re really in no condition for physical activity,” she pointed out dryly.

“Don’t care,” he muttered, guiding her out to the soft, springy sofa in the room next to Engineering where Raven took her mid-shift naps.  Abby sat him down on the soft cushions and undressed him with tremendous care, her hands gentle and deft around his injured side.  “Lie back,” she whispered, stroking his hair, and helped settle him on his back on the long, wide seat of the sofa, his head pillowed on the arm rest.  He watched while she pulled her sweater off over her head, baring her softly rounded breasts to him again, the way she had before, with the key in her mouth.  But it was so different now, she was all shy smiles and sparkling eyes, her hands fumbling with nervous haste as she impatiently tugged off her jeans.

She was soft and pale and perfect, her honey-colored hair tumbling around her shoulders like a golden cloud, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known in his life, and against all the odds, somehow she loved him, and it felt like witnessing a miracle.

Gently, carefully, minding his wound, she straddled his thighs, knees braced on either side of him and hands planted firmly on the armrest.  He tilted his chin up to reach her breasts, flicking at first one nipple and then the other with his tongue.  She gasped a little in startled pleasure, then leaned down lower so he could capture more.  “I like that,” she whispered, and it was like no time had passed at all, the way her soft voice sent shivers through his whole body when she told him what she wanted.

Her hand slipped down to grasp him tightly, stroking him in her strong small fist to make him ready, and even the simple touch of her hand was more pleasure than he thought he could bear.  He gasped so sharply that she pulled back in horror, afraid she’d hurt him.

“No,” he whispered, shaking his head, pulling her mouth down to his.  “No.  It’s just that you feel so good.”

She smiled, tugging at his lower lip with her own, her breath sweet and warm against his.  “You feel good too,” she whispered.  “I’ve missed this so much, Bellamy.  I’ve been missing you for such a long time.”

“How could you miss me when you didn’t know who I was?” he asked, but she shook her head.

“No,” she said softly.  “I meant _before_.  Before the City of Light, before ALIE, before all of this happened.  The minute Sinclair’s team showed up with the cargo truck after we spent the night in the Rover.  The minute we got back to Arkadia.  I started to miss you right then, and I didn’t stop.”

“But you were the one who said – “

“I know,” she confessed.  “Because I thought if I couldn’t have you, it might be easier not to be near you.”

“It wasn’t,” he said.  “It wasn’t easier.  It was miserable.”

“I know,” she said softly.  “But that’s over now.”  And he swallowed hard as she sat back on her heels, straddling his hips, and slowly, slowly, slowly guided him inside of her.  “Oh God,” she whispered as her hips lowered against his, drawing his cock deeper and deeper inside.  “Oh God, Bellamy, I’ve missed this.”

“Abby,” he groaned, his arms sliding up to grasp her soft hips in his strong hands, and he couldn’t stop himself from arching his back, thrusting up to capture more of her . . . which immediately led him to cry out and sink back down in excruciating pain.

Abby sighed in fond exasperation.  “You got shot in the abdomen,” she reminded him pointedly.  “You have to lay still.”

“You’re not exactly making it easy.”

“I’m making it _very_ easy,” she retorted.  “I’m doing all the work.  You just lie back.”

“Abby – “

“Lie back,” she whispered, stroking his hair.  “Close your eyes.  Don’t move.”  And she sank down lower against him, taking him deeper inside, her breath hot and sharp with pleasure as she reached down and pressed the palms of her hands against the hard, flat muscle of his hipbones, holding him firmly in place.

“Abby,” he whispered, and her eyes flew open at the sound of his voice, and she bent forward at the waist to brace herself against the armrest behind him.  Her hand accidentally brushed his bandage and he yelped in pain, making her giggle again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, laughing, a little helplessly.  “I’ve never done this while trying to work around a gunshot wound.”

“And a bruised hip,” he added, wincing a little as she repositioned herself.

“On Raven’s couch.”

“With Kane napping in the other room.”

Abby collapsed in giggles against Bellamy’s shoulder, and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing too.  “Jesus,” he muttered, “we’re a _disaster_.”

She kissed her way up his neck to his mouth, still laughing, hands tangling in his hair.  “Listen,” she said, “ _eventually_ we’re going to get to do it in a proper bed, without painful injuries, like normal people.”

“Is that a promise?”

“But for now,” she grinned, pressing a kiss on his forehead, “we’re just gonna do the best we can.”

“Fine,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.  “Just, you know, try not to punch me in the _open wound_ again.”

“If you can’t handle it, we can stop.”

“I can handle it.”

“You sure?” she asked archly, and he growled a little, tugging at her hair to pull her in for a hard, hungry, desperate kiss.

“I’m sure,” he whispered roughly as he pulled away, and her eyes, dark with desire, weren’t laughing anymore.  She bit her lip, breathing hard, staring down at him, then ran her hands down his chest to press flat against his hips.

“Don’t move,” she murmured.  “Let me.”

And as she began, slowly and gently, to ride him, her fingers digging sharply into his skin, he watched her.  He watched the way her eyes closed, almost reflexively, like she was concentrating, the way she bit almost absently at her lower lip. He watched the way her lips parted in a silent gasp as she rocked back and forth against him.  He watched the soft sway of her breasts as her body moved above him.  He watched the way she began to lose herself, her head tilting forward, golden hair curtaining her face.  “I missed you,” she whispered, her hips rocking harder and harder to take in more and more of him.  “Oh God, Bellamy, I missed you.”

“Abby,” he groaned as she finally sank down all the way, taking him completely inside her, pressing his hips down with her hands to keep him from thrusting upwards.  She rose and fell on top of him, but gently, mindful of his injury, keeping her weight off the side of his abdomen.  He was still sore all over, but he’d long since stopped caring, because in all his life nobody had ever looked at him the way Abby Griffin was looking at him right now.

Her hands slid up his hips to his chest, then gripped the armrest of the sofa on either side of his head.  “Are you okay?” she murmured, so close to him their foreheads were touching.  “Am I hurting?”  He couldn’t speak, could only shake his head.  “Can I go harder?” she asked him, eyes wide with pleading appeal.  “I don’t want to hurt you, but – “

“Harder,” he nodded, his voice coming out in a cracked gasp, and she smiled.  He closed his eyes, feeling her soft hair trail over his skin, as her hips began to move up and down, harder and harder against him.  Every thrust sent him deeper inside her, and he would be sore in the morning but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, breathing soft panting kisses up and down his neck.  “I’m so close.  Are you close?”  He nodded, and felt her lips brush across his skin to find his own, her warm damp breath sweet inside his mouth.  His hand slid up her thigh to brush light fingertips against her clit, startling her with pleasure, and he felt her contract sharply around his cock in surprise, making them both gasp at the same time.  “Right there,” she whispered.  “I like it when you touch me there.”

“I know,” he smiled.  “I was paying attention the first time.”

She leaned down, burying her face in his neck, and he could feel from the shaking of her shoulders that she was laughing again.  “I’m so happy,” she whispered.  “You make me so happy.”  He lifted his other arm, not caring about the sharp pain in his side, to wrap around her back, pulling her down to lay against him, her breasts softly pressed against his chest, her mouth breathing kisses against his neck.  When she came, it was fierce but quiet, her body shaking with whispered cries, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she gasped his name in a low voice over and over, her forehead resting against his, their eyes locked together.  He followed soon after, biting his lip to keep from moaning as he burst inside her while she kissed him and kissed him and kissed him.

As their breathing slowed back to normal and her body softened down against his, carefully shifting her weight to stay off the bandage, she nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder with a happy little sigh, and his hands slid up to stroke her soft hair, damp with sweat around the temples and silky against his fingers.  "It wasn't just that one night," he said unexpectedly, and she turned, puzzled, propping herself up on her elbow to look at him.

"What do you mean?"

"That was what I told myself," he said, staring up at the ceiling, his hand stroking her hair.  "When I wanted to convince myself it was nothing.  When I wanted to forget you.  To put it all in the past.  I would tell myself, it couldn't possibly have meant anything.  There was moonshine, I was upset, it was one night.  That's what I told myself.  It was just that one night.  But it wasn't."

"I tried that too," she confessed.  "It all seemed so impossible.  It seemed like such a disaster waiting to happen."

"I mean, I did get shot," he pointed out mildly, and she sighed in mock exasperation.

"You're just never going to let that go, are you?"

"Well, not today, no," he said, and grinned as she kissed his chest, rose up to her knees and climbed off the couch with a dancer's grace, and handed him his clothes.  "You need food, and sleep," she said firmly.  "I'll stay with Marcus.  You go back to your quarters and get some rest."

"Abby," he said suddenly.  "What you said before.  About Kane.  I don't -"

Her finger pressed to his lips silenced him.  "You two need to talk," she said.  "Alone."

"I don't understand."

"You will," she said, and there was something in her smile that sent a shiver down his back.  "Go get some sleep," she told him again.  "This can wait until morning."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OH NO IT'S BECOMING AN OT3
> 
> And by "oh no" I mean "you're welcome, everyone who messaged me to ask if I would consider making this an OT3'" like GUYS WHO DID YOU THINK YOU WERE TALKING TO, OF COURSE IT IS

Bellamy woke up to the sound of his sister’s voice.

“Octavia,” he croaked out in a voice harsh from sleep, sitting bolt upright in his bed – and immediately regretting it as, with a loud yelping exclamation, he felt a white-hot shooting pain in his side that called him back to reality.

“Hold on,” he heard Marcus Kane’s cool, amused voice say.  “I think Bellamy just tore all his stitches open trying to climb through the walkie-talkie to get to you.”

“Can you tell my idiot brother not to kill himself, please?” Octavia’s irritable voice came through the receiver.

“I can try,” Kane observed dryly, “but I don’t think he listens to me.”

“I hate you both,” Bellamy muttered, and Kane laughed.

“Here,” he said, tossing Bellamy the radio.  “You’re up, which means my shift’s over.  I’m going to go make us breakfast.  Come by the mess when you’re done and I’ll feed you something.”

“What do you mean, your shift’s over?” he started to ask, but Kane was already out the door.

“He means he sat up next to your bed all night to make sure you didn’t die in your sleep,” Octavia snapped, her concern for her brother masked under several layers of sarcasm and short temper, and Bellamy was grateful she wasn’t there to see the look on his face.

He had turned to Pike, despite all Kane’s pleading.  He had so much blood on his hands and some of it was almost Kane’s.  If Abby and Octavia hadn’t intervened, Kane would be dead.  It would have felt like justice to Bellamy if that bullet had killed him.  And yet Kane had sat all night in Bellamy’s desk chair, watching him sleep to make sure he was all right.

Nothing made any sense at all.

* * *

An hour later – after Octavia, Clarke, Raven, Monty, Murphy and finally even Indra had taken turns reassuring him that the battle was over, all his friends were fine, and that if he so much as  _ thought _ about climbing into that Rover with a day-old gunshot wound to drive back to Polis, that they would all take turns, as Raven put it, “killing you until you’re literally dead” – Bellamy finally emerged from his room to find Kane in the mess hall.

“Abby’s sleeping,” said Kane in answer to his unspoken question, and motioned Bellamy to sit at one of the long tables where he’d set out a tray of food.  “Here.  Eat something.”

“I didn’t know you could cook,” said Bellamy, who hadn’t realized he was starving until the warm, heady smell of breakfast – some kind of cinnamon-laced grain porridge full of nuts and dried fruit – overtook his nostrils.  Kane was sipping coffee, too, which was technically illegal; they’d brought back half a storeroom full of coffee beans from Mount Weather before the bombing but were rationing them carefully and this was an off week.  But he’d never gotten used to the bitter flavor of the highly-caffeinated Grounder tea they served instead, so he wasn’t about to complain.

“Well, I can heat things up and chop things,” Kane observed dryly, “which was about all this required.  And I can make coffee now too.”

“Illegally,” Bellamy reminded him, but gratefully took the heavy glass mug Kane handed him.

“Octavia says they’re all coming home the day after tomorrow,” said Kane.  “I think the camp will survive if three people use three days of coffee rations.  And besides, I think we’ve earned it.” 

“I’ll say,” said Bellamy with his mouth full, “some of us got shot.”

He’d meant it as a joke, it had slipped out almost without thinking, and he was  _ stunned _ by the lightning-quick transformation in expression that fell over Kane’s face.  The warm half-smile vanished entirely, replaced by a look of such wrenching misery that Bellamy could feel his distress like a palpable thing hovering in the air between them.

“Kane, I was kidding,” he said.  “I didn’t mean it.”

“I’m going to get some air,” said Kane abruptly, and without looking at Bellamy he stood up from the table, pushing his chair back with such force that it crashed over backwards onto the ground, and before Bellamy even knew what was happening, he was out the door.

Reasoning that if Kane wanted company he would have stayed where he was, Bellamy let him go and finished his breakfast.  He took his time about it, stalling a little, knowing that eventually he was going to have to sort this out with Kane but wasn’t entirely sure what to say, or why it was that the man had looked at him like that, as though he’d just been slapped in the face.

He refilled his coffee cup from the pot – and Kane’s too, as a peace offering – and then made his own way out the door.

He didn’t have to go look very far. 

The second Rover – the one he’d hijacked in the hopes of slowing them down in their pursuit – was still parked a few hundred feet outside the Arkadia gates where they’d left it.  Kane had hauled an oil canister out to refuel the tank.  As Bellamy made his way down the hill, Kane looked up for a moment and saw him.  His expression didn’t change, but as he wiped his hands on his jeans and set the oil canister in the back of the Rover, he moved around the back of it and disappeared out of sight.  When Bellamy arrived, the back door of the Rover was open and Kane was sitting on the edge, looking out at the trees.  He didn’t say anything as Bellamy sat down next to him, but accepted the coffee with a small nod of thanks and set it down next to him.

It was silent and uncomfortable for a long moment before Bellamy finally decided he’d had it.

He set his own coffee down, reached up, and smacked Kane on the back of the head as hard as he could.

“ _ Jesus Christ _ ,” exclaimed Kane with a loud yelp of a pain, “what the hell was  _ that _ for?”

“You’re acting weird,” said Bellamy, picking up his coffee and taking a casual sip.  “I had to make sure you weren’t still chipped.”

It worked.  After a long still moment, Kane sighed, and the sigh turned into a low warm chuckle, and then they were both laughing, and whatever had gone wrong for a moment back in the mess hall was suddenly right again.  “Drink your coffee before it gets cold,” Bellamy told him, and Kane did.  “We don’t have to talk,” he added hastily.  “Like if you just want to sit, we can sit.  We don’t have to talk.”

“We do, though,” said Kane, without looking at him.  “That’s the problem, Bellamy.  We do.  I’m just . . . not quite sure what to say.”  He took a long drink of coffee and looked out at the woods in front of them.  “I know I should start with ‘I’m sorry,’” he said in a strangely heavy voice, “but it feels so . . . inadequate.”  He gave a dry, harsh little laugh with no real amusement in it.  “’I’m sorry for shooting you,’” he said, a little bitterly.  “Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?  ‘I’m sorry you’ll have a scar for the rest of your life to remind you that I came within half a second of killing you in cold blood.’”  Bellamy looked away, following Kane’s gaze out to the horizon.  “There should be a word for this, but there isn’t,” Kane said.  “Something more than ‘sorry.’  Sorry isn’t enough.  Sorry does nothing.  Sorry fixes  _ nothing _ .”

“You don’t need a word for it,” said Bellamy.  “You don’t owe me a thing.  After everything I did to you –“

“Bellamy –“

“I voted against you and Abby,” he said.  “I stood by and let Pike massacre all those Grounders.  People who were sent to help us.  I got you arrested.  Lincoln is dead because of me.  And you almost – “ He stopped, suddenly overcome, the pain as fresh as though it were happening all over again, the sad dark look in Kane’s eyes as Pike pronounced the sentence and the guards led him away.

“Bellamy, don’t,” said Kane.  “It isn’t the same.  You and me, it isn’t the same.”

“Why not?”

“Because you didn’t  _ want _ me to die,” said Kane simply, and the hollow sadness in his voice was heartbreaking.  “I know you, Bellamy.  I know what you were trying to do.  I know you thought that following Charles Pike was the best thing for our people.”

“I was wrong.”

“Yes, you were,” said Kane calmly, and Bellamy was strangely relieved that he didn’t argue, didn’t justify, didn’t offer false comfort, but just sat there with him inside the truth and didn’t run away.  “But you didn’t know when they arrested me that Pike was going to have me executed.  You had no way of knowing that.  And that’s the difference.  You didn’t take the chip,” he added, “so you won’t quite understand what it’s like.  It isn’t like what you think.  It isn’t like she’s inside you, controlling your arms and legs and forcing words out of your mouth like you’re some kind of a puppet.  She makes it feel like it’s  _ coming from you. _  So when I pointed that gun at you, Bellamy, this is the difference between you and me, the only thing I knew was that  _ I wanted to kill you _ .”  He took a long drink of coffee and Bellamy could see him fighting back a shudder of horror, remembering.  “There was a part of me inside that was still me,” he went on flatly, “which only made everything worse.  Because that Marcus – the real Marcus – was watching himself point a gun at your heart and fighting like hell to get through to stop it from happening, but I couldn’t.  The Marcus holding the gun couldn’t even  _ hear _ him.  That Marcus wanted only one thing in the whole world in that moment and it was to watch you die.  That’s what she did to us,” he said in a dull voice, his knuckles white with barely-repressed tension against the glass mug in his hand.  “She didn’t just make us do things.  She made us  _ want _ to do them.  And the memory of those feelings is as real as any other memory.  I’m  _ always  _ going to remember what it felt like to want you dead, Bellamy, and it’s  _ always _ going to make me feel sick.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Bellamy.  “You’re not the one who set all of this in motion.  If Pike hadn’t won the election – “

“Bellamy, stop.”

“No, if Pike hadn’t won the election, if you or Abby were the Chancellor when Jaha showed up, he would never have gotten this far.  Abby was onto him from the beginning, she knew those chips were dangerous.  It was only because Pike gave him permission to stay, and she couldn’t get Pike to listen to her, that all of this happened in the first place.”

“Bellamy – “

“And then we both left her,” he went on, his voice coming out in a rush, “and that was my fault too, because if you hadn’t had to go on the run, and if I hadn’t gone with Octavia to turn Pike over to the Grounders, Abby wouldn’t have had to stay behind alone.  I left her behind, and Raven too, I left them unprotected, and there was nobody left to stop Jaha and ALIE then.  Everyone we love could have died, Kane.   _ Everyone. _  Because of  _ me. _  Because of what I did.  If you had shot me, I would have deserved it.  You should have run me down in the Rover when you had the chance,” he muttered, his voice heavy with despair, and he could feel Kane’s gaze turn toward him, stunned.

“You can’t possibly mean that,” he said in a low, urgent voice.  “Bellamy, you can’t  _ possibly  _ believe that’s true.”

“It’s okay, Kane,” said Bellamy, the relief of saying the words out loud washing over him.  “It’s the truth.  After all the things I’ve done, if you’d killed me, it would have been justice.”

“What about your sister?”

“O is tough.  She’d be fine.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Kane fired back sharply, with such force that Bellamy flinched, startled.  “And you know it.  None of us would.  Not for a moment.  Not ever.” 

Bellamy was silent.

“The real Marcus Kane, the one in the Rover,” Kane said gently, after a long moment.  “That man could never have lived with himself.  It wouldn’t have been justice.  I know you, Bellamy, and I know what it’s like to feel this way, but it wouldn’t have been justice.  It would have been devastating.”  He closed his eyes for a moment.  Bellamy watched him.  “I could never have lived with myself,” he said again in a low voice, and Bellamy felt his heart start beating with a curious intensity.

“There are hundreds of people dead in Polis,” he told Kane.  “They couldn’t get everyone out of the City of Light before Clarke shut it down.  Some of them were our people.  If I had died, then, if you hadn’t had to leave Arkadia – if you’d been there to stop Jaha – maybe it would have saved those people.”

“Even to save the whole world, I could never have harmed you,” said Kane in a quiet voice, and he turned to look Bellamy in the eye for the very first time.  There was something strangely raw in his gaze, not unpleasant but not comfortable either, and Bellamy wanted to look away but couldn’t.  “Not even to save my own life.  Even if I had known it would end with execution.  It wouldn’t have changed anything.  It was  _ always _ going to end with me getting out of the car.”

“Why?”

“You know why,” Marcus said in a low voice, crackling with a strange intensity, and Bellamy swallowed hard.  “I can’t make the weight on your soul any lighter, Bellamy, and I can’t carry the burdens for you that you have to carry yourself.  But I can tell you that I wouldn’t do it differently.  Even knowing what I know now.  I wish you hadn’t been standing there.  I wish I could have stopped Pike.  I wish a lot of things.  But to save the whole world, I still could never have hurt you,” he murmured, and there was something soothing in his rich warm voice, something so kind and honest that Bellamy began to wonder if maybe, against all probability, Kane meant it.  Whether, perhaps, there was a chance he might someday be forgiven.  Whether perhaps, at least by Kane and Abby, he already had.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Kane set down his empty coffee cup and pulled Bellamy into a fierce, protective embrace, wrapping his strong arms tightly around the younger man’s back and leaning his chin down to rest on Bellamy’s shoulder.  Bellamy couldn’t move, or speak, or breathe.  He sat stiffly for a moment, unsure how to respond, before tentatively reaching his own arms up and returning the embrace.  Kane’s back was strong and sturdy against the palms of his hands, and Bellamy felt the panic and tension ease out of his body as he softened into Kane’s embrace.

He felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

_ Safe. _

And something else too, maybe.  Something that had emerged from the shadows when Kane and Abby tried to lure him into taking the chip, and was reawakened by whatever that thing had been in Kane’s voice just now, and the strange way that Abby had spoken last night where from time to time instead of “I” she had said “we.”  There was something strange and new in the air between them and Bellamy didn’t know what it was, but he knew he was strangely reluctant to let go of Kane’s embrace.

Kane, however, was also in no hurry.  His arms were strong and sure and his hands were comforting, familiar, impossibly warm on Bellamy’s back, and it was a long time before he sat back to meet Bellamy’s eyes.

“The past is behind us,” he said to Bellamy firmly.  “I’m just glad you’re alive.”  Then he cupped Bellamy’s jaw in both hands and pressed a light kiss on his cheek.

It was a sweet kiss, chaste and affectionate and warm, a kiss that drew a very careful line in the sand and did not cross it.  A kiss that could have meant nothing except what it seemed at face value – friendship, comfort, kindness.  That was all.

That could have been all.

But whatever it was, this thing hovering in the air between them, it wrapped itself around Bellamy and didn’t let go, it took him by the hand and pulled him over the line that Kane had very carefully drawn, and as Kane pulled away, Bellamy’s head tilted sharply and suddenly up towards him, as though the older man’s mouth was a magnet drawing his own towards it.

Kane froze.

So did Bellamy.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.  Bellamy realized just a heartbeat too late what he had done, panic sweeping over him, a flush of shame and mortification rushing over his cheeks.  They sat there, mouths parted, breath deepening, eyes locked on each other, as a horrified Bellamy found himself completely unable to force his muscles to start working again so he could pull away, sprint back up the hill as fast as he could, lock himself in his room, and never come out again.

Then,  _ “Oh,” _ said Kane softly, sudden comprehension dawning on his face, as though Bellamy had confirmed something he’d been wanting to know, and before Bellamy could compose himself to salvage the moment or apologize or flee, Kane’s mouth brushed softly against his own.

It was the lightest of kisses – not tentative or uncertain, but experimental, testing the waters, holding out an offering to see if Bellamy would take it.

“Like that?” Kane said, the flicker of a smile on his face, his hand still cupping Bellamy’s jaw, and Bellamy felt something inside his chest crack wide open, a new thing being born, coming into the light, and something deep inside him shifted and spun and then clicked into place.

“No,” he said firmly, “like _ this _ .”  Then he took Kane’s face in his hands, feeling the soft bristle of beard against his skin, and placed a hard, reckless kiss against his mouth.

He could feel Kane’s whole body go rigid for a moment, startled, almost fearful, but it vanished as quickly as it came.  Kane’s mouth parted and he made a soft, low sound that was like a cross between a hum and a sigh, and suddenly Bellamy felt as though the Rover was careening downhill after someone had cut the brakes.  His heart raced and his head spun and his stomach fluttered as Kane kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, still making that intoxicating soft little sound as their mouths moved together in perfect unison, opening and closing against each other in a shiver-inducing rush of contact.  Kane’s arms tightened around him, his hands stroking Bellamy’s back, and Bellamy’s hands dropped to Kane’s waist to gently, carefully guide him down onto the floor of the Rover.

The kissing went on for a long time.  Neither of them knew how long.  The entire rest of the world had been forgotten, eclipsed completely by this startling, earth-shattering new thing that was happening to them that had never happened to either of them before.  Bellamy hadn’t known the name for the reason his heart had cracked in half the moment he heard Pike pronounce Kane’s death sentence, but he knew the name for it now.  It skittered and whispered all over his skin, up and down his spine, and even inside his mouth as Kane’s tongue brushed with impossible delicacy against his own.

He couldn’t say the word out loud, but he knew exactly what it was, because he’d felt it before.

In this exact spot, as a matter of fact.

Kane seemed to read his mind, his mouth drifting from Bellamy’s lips to his cheekbone to his jaw, as he murmured low into Bellamy’s ear, “You and this damned Rover.”

Bellamy couldn’t help himself.  He burst out laughing, and after a moment, Kane did too.

“Well,” said Bellamy, “I guess that answers the question about how much Abby told you.”

“She didn’t have to,” said Kane.  “I was inside her head.  And she was in mine.  I remember it too, Bellamy.  I remember it like I was there.” 

Something in his voice made Bellamy shiver.

“Can I ask you,” he began in a soft voice, as Kane’s mouth trailed kisses up and down his throat.  “What’s it like?  Having someone else’s memories?  Is it like you’re watching it, or – “

“I remember it as  _ she _ remembers it,” Kane murmured.  “I felt it.  I can still feel it.  Like I’m the one it happened to.”

Bellamy swallowed hard.  “So for you, it’s not like . . . it wasn’t like watching her with me, it was like . . . it was like me and you . . . like  _ we _ were – “  Kane nodded.  “So that’s how it happened, then,” Bellamy said.  “This – you – this . . . that’s how it all started?”

“Everything would be so much easier to explain,” said Kane ruefully, “if that were true.”

Bellamy stared at him, startled, heart racing.  Kane looked back at him with something impossibly warm and passionate in his eyes.  “I don’t want anything from you that you don’t freely choose to give me,” he said, his hand hard and soft at the same time where it cradled Bellamy’s cheek.  “But there’s nothing you could ever choose to give me that I wouldn’t want.”

“What do  _ you  _ want?” Bellamy asked him unexpectedly. 

“I want you and I want Abby,” Kane said.  “I want there to be a way for that – for  _ us _ – to work.”

“How would that – what would that – “

“I don’t know.”  He kissed Bellamy again, his mouth hungry and open and insistent.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know anything.  But I don’t want to have to choose between you,” he whispered.  “And neither does she.”

“I’m not sure I want to choose either,” said Bellamy, and he hadn’t realized until the words tumbled out that they were true.

He hadn’t realized that all along, this had been the thing that kept pushing him farther and farther from Abby.  Out in the Rover, in the storm, alone with nothing but moonshine and blankets and desire, it had been so easy to forget about Marcus Kane.  It hadn’t felt like a betrayal; there was nothing to betray.  But from the moment he’d come home, from the moment it had become so visible in front of him again, the fact that these two people were falling in love with each other and he would only be in the way, he’d had a harder and harder time maintaining his composure in her presence.  Every time he saw her he wanted to throw her up against the wall and kiss her until neither of them could breathe, but every time he saw Kane he felt like he’d committed some unpardonable sin.

But here it was.  This was the reason.  This was why it hadn’t worked before.  They weren’t a set of twos, they were one unit of three, and the moment he realized that Bellamy felt a crushing weight lift off his shoulders at the thought that he would never have to choose between them again.

“Abby’s not really sleeping, is she?” he asked Kane, who laughed a little, conceding.

“She’s been reorganizing the medical storage closets since after breakfast,” he said.  “She gets restless without something to do.”

“And she wanted to leave us alone.”

“Yes.”

“To talk,” asked Bellamy with a raised eyebrow, “or for this?”

Kane’s low, throaty chuckle hummed against Bellamy’s skin as his warm mouth grazed across Bellamy’s collarbone.  “Probably both,” he admitted, then looked up to meet his eyes.  “Bellamy,” he said, and there was something thrillingly intense in his low voice.  “Should we . . . go inside?”

Bellamy swallowed hard.

“I know you enjoy the Rover,” said Kane with a faint flicker of amusement, “but you’re also injured.  And there are . . . certain things . . . that are a lot easier with a bed.”

“Are we – going to be doing those things?”

“I want to,” said Kane.  “If that’s what you want.”

“I think it is,” said Bellamy, trying not to sound tentative, trying to sound sure, because he  _ was _ sure, he knew he wanted this, he just didn’t quite know what “this” was.  He felt a fluttering anxiety in his stomach at the thought, and Kane must have sensed it, because when he kissed him again, it was full of something tender and reassuring.

“Slow,” he said to Bellamy.  “One step at a time.”  He cupped Bellamy’s cheeks in both his hands.  “For now,” he said, “I just want to kiss you.  But I’m 42 and you have a gunshot wound and it would be easier on both of us if we were doing this in my bed.”  He pressed his mouth against Bellamy’s again, warm and persuasive.  “Can we start there?” he whispered.  “Will you come to my bed?”

Bellamy nodded.  Kane smiled.

“Good,” he murmured.  “Come with me.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter with the X-rated threesome scene so like DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU

It began slow.

Kane walked purposefully back up the hill, through the open door of the hangar, and into the long hallway that led to the residential quarters.  Bellamy followed him.  He’d been in Kane’s room before, of course, with Harper and Miller on the day of the jailbreak, but it hadn’t meant _this_ to him then.  It had been unsettling for other reasons.  Reasons that had much less to do with the bed against the back wall and much more to do with the man whose bed it was and whether he would ever sleep in it again, whether he would even live to see another night.  But all of that was over.  Now every footstep down the metal corridor echoed with the rhythm of Bellamy’s heart.  He walked a few paces behind Kane, though he wasn’t sure why, and was so preoccupied with the flutter of anticipation and anxiety in his chest about the thing about to happen that he felt a physical jolt of surprise when Kane stopped walking and Bellamy realized they were there.

Kane closed the door behind them, even though they had the entire camp to themselves, but the bubble of privacy made Bellamy relax a little for some reason anyway.  Once inside, though, neither of them quite knew how to begin.  They stood uncertainly, looking at each other, for a long moment, before Kane sat down on the side of the bed and began to take off his boots.  After a moment, Bellamy sat beside him and did the same.  It bought them both some time, pulling off socks and tucking them inside and then lining the boots up neatly against the wall.  Kane was wearing his jacket, though Bellamy wasn’t, and hanging the jacket up on its familiar hook took Kane to the other side of the room and made a little space between them, which helped too.  But then they were out of time, there was nothing left to remove but their clothes, and that was such a decisive line to cross that they needed a moment to ease into it.

“I haven’t . . . have you ever,” Bellamy began, then stopped himself, unsure what answer to that question could possibly make him feel more at ease and finally deciding there was no such answer possible.  But Kane understood the question inside the question, and crossed the room back to Bellamy in three long strides to cradle his face in his hands and kiss him again.

“It doesn’t need to be about that,” Kane murmured gently, answering the real thing Bellamy had been trying not to ask.  “You don’t have to impress me, Bellamy.  You don’t have to know how to do everything right.  You don’t have to be perfect.  Just be _here_.”  He kissed him again, softly.  “Just be right here with me,” he said again.  “We can figure it out together.”  And he smiled with a resigned little shrug, as if to say, _I’m as lost here as you are,_ which Bellamy found oddly comforting.  

“Shirts next?” Kane suggested.  “We’ve seen each other shirtless before, that won’t feel quite so strange, maybe.  At least to start.”

“The last time I saw you without your shirt on,” Bellamy pointed out, “we were with six other guards hauling firewood in from the woods.  We weren’t alone in your bedroom.”

“Would you feel more comfortable starting with – “

“No,” Bellamy quickly cut him off, seeing Kane’s eyes drift downwards.  “No.  I think . . . I just need a minute.  Before I can – Before _that_.”

Kane nodded agreeably, and even though he appeared perfectly composed, Bellamy could see that under the surface he was a little rattled as well.  He, too, seemed like he might need a moment before he was ready to take his jeans off in front of Bellamy.  But after a long uncertain pause, both of them motionless and staring at each other, Kane finally pulled off his own t-shirt, and Bellamy followed.

It wasn’t the same at all.

It wasn’t like swinging axes under the midday sun with Kane and Miller and Monroe and Octavia and Lincoln and Harper, drenched in sweat and covered with splinters, hauling cartloads of wood back to Arkadia to stock the firepit.  The girls had stripped down to their bras and the men had all pulled off their shirts and nobody had noticed or cared, because everyone was blinking back the rivulets of perspiration pouring into their eyes.  And maybe Bellamy had observed, in a casual way, that Kane shirtless looked exactly the way he had somehow expected – broad in the shoulders, with extraordinarily powerful arms, and a soft light thatch of dark hair down the center of his muscled chest.  But it wasn’t the same as seeing that same chest here, in front of him, where he had free permission to touch it, with Kane close enough to touch his own.

Kane stepped in close enough to rest the palms of his hands against Bellamy’s bare shoulders before sliding them softly down the planes of his chest, fingertips grazing the ridges of tight young abdominal muscles, before coming to rest lightly against the waistband of Bellamy’s jeans.  He inhaled sharply at the sensation, but Kane didn’t immediately go any further.

“Anytime you want me to stop or slow down,” said Kane gently, “just say the word.”

“What if I want you to . . .”  Bellamy trailed off suddenly, flushing a little at the implications of the thing he’d begun to say, but Kane understood.

“Then ask me for more,” he murmured.  “Whenever you’re ready.”

“More,” Bellamy whispered before he could stop himself, and then suddenly Kane’s hands were unfastening his jeans, pushing them gently off Bellamy’s hips so he could step out of them, before doing the same to his own.  Bellamy swallowed hard, longing to look down at the soft thin dark cotton that was now all that separated their bodies from each other, but he couldn’t quite muster up the courage to do it.  But, “More,” he said again in a soft voice, and Kane took him by the hand to guide him over to the bed.

Something about the intimacy of it – lying on his back on Kane’s mattress, staring up at Kane’s ceiling, seeing the room the way it looked to Kane every morning when he woke up and every night before he fell asleep – softened something inside Bellamy, and another layer of his apprehension fell away.  Kane was true to his promise; even once they were in bed together, he waited for Bellamy’s invitation to take the next step.  “More,” said Bellamy as Kane climbed in under the covers to lie still beside him, and then he was in Kane’s arms.  He lay on his back, head resting on a stack of pillows that smelled like Kane, and closed his eyes, letting himself simply _feel._

Kane’s mouth was soft and warm, brushing gently against Bellamy’s own.  His kisses were languid and unhurried, almost drowsy, and his hands stroking Bellamy’s hair were soothing and tender.  Bellamy wondered to himself, as that hard bare chest rose and fell against his own, how many people in the world besides himself and Abby had ever seen this side of Marcus Kane, this intoxicating rush of sweetness.  He wondered how many people had ever experienced what he was experiencing now.  Maybe no one ever had.  Kane kissed him as though they had all the time in the world, as though if all they did for the rest of the day was this he’d be perfectly happy.  Bellamy knew he wanted more – he could feel soft threadbare cotton against his skin with the heavy, slumbering bulk of Kane’s cock inside it, beginning to swell and stir against him – but he didn’t press even once.  He just kissed Bellamy over and over, a hundred times, a thousand times, with impossibly affectionate hands caressing his hair.

Then, “More,” murmured Bellamy, and his breath caught in his throat with a soft sharp hiss as Kane gave him more, sliding one hand down the younger man’s body to rest lightly over the soft cotton of his shorts.  The kissing grew deeper and hungrier, Kane’s mouth restless and passionate against his own, and Bellamy felt his whole body begin to rouse as Kane’s hand began to slowly, almost casually, stroke him through the fabric.  His nails scratched lightly over the thin layer of cotton, sending sparks of pleasure shooting through Bellamy’s whole body and causing his cock to swell.  He couldn’t suppress a sharp little gasp as Kane’s gentle caress – maybe accidentally or maybe deliberately – landed on the achingly sensitive tip of his cock, and his hips lifted against Kane’s with an involuntary jolt.  Kane’s hand paused in its ministrations as he looked down at Bellamy with concern in his warm brown eyes.

“Is this okay?” he murmured, and Bellamy nodded his assent so violently that Kane chuckled with satisfied amusement.

“Let’s stay here for awhile," Bellamy said, and Kane smiled.

“As long as you want."

Kane curled up close against the side of Bellamy’s body, settling in comfortably with one hand in Bellamy’s hair and the other gently, lightly running his fingernails up and down the thin dark fabric that was the only thing separating skin from skin.  Just like before, his pace was startlingly unhurried.  He kissed and stroked Bellamy as though he would be perfectly content if this was all there ever was, as though the waves of pleasure that made Bellamy tremble beneath him were sufficient for them both.  It was only the swell of his cock – growing harder and harder against Bellamy’s hip – that gave anything away.

When this had gone on for long enough that Bellamy’s shyness had melted away, long enough that he could begin to envision what he wanted, he asked Kane for more once again, which led to the shedding of both pairs of cotton shorts and a powerful hand pressed warmly against the swell of his cock.  The sensation of Kane touching him – really touching him, his fingers wrapped tight around the smooth long bulk of Bellamy’s shaft and gliding lightly up and down – was almost unbearably pleasurable, and the mouth pressed against his own kissed him harder and harder, without ceasing.  Kane was making that shiver-inducing little sound again, the faint cross between a hum and a sigh, and the flutter it sent through Bellamy’s body echoed all the way down to the tip of his cock.  He could _feel_ the sound, could feel it seep into his body, could feel it thrum and throb inside him and make him swell desperately towards Kane, unable to resist wondering what other sounds the man might have inside him.

Kane stroked him for a long time, but his pace was careful.  He let go or slowed down from time to time, letting the heady rush of ecstasy fade in order to set it aflame again.  He edged Bellamy with tremendous care and persistence for so long that the bedroom began to spin and blur and Bellamy had to close his eyes to keep from feeling dizzy.  Kane’s hand on his cock was magic.  His grip was firm but gentle, gliding up and down the shaft, occasionally running his thumb slickly across the tip, which was already dewy and glistening as it grew harder and harder for Bellamy to restrain his pleasure.  “More,” he pleaded, and Kane’s hand worked him faster and faster, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, Bellamy didn’t want to come this way, he wanted something he couldn’t even have brought himself to name out loud yet, he wanted all of Marcus Kane and he wanted it now.  So he whispered the word again – “More,” he begged Kane, “more, more" - and then gripped Kane’s shoulders to push him off just far enough that Bellamy could roll over onto his stomach.

This was a mistake.

“No, no,” cried Kane in horror, his hands reaching up to pull Bellamy off his side and roll him back as Bellamy winced at the shooting pain in his side beneath the bandage.  “No, Bellamy, we can’t.  Not that way.”

Bellamy’s heart sank a little with bitter disappointment.  "Why not?"

“It will hurt too much,” explained Kane, stroking the younger man’s hair, pressing him firmly back onto his back.  "I don't want to hurt you."

“I can take it,” Bellamy muttered, a little defensively, but Kane shook his head.

“She’ll kill me if you rip out those stitches,” he said firmly, and the words made Bellamy’s whole body collapse in a relief so overpowering that Kane realized immediately what had happened.

“Oh,” he murmured, and kissed Bellamy’s mouth over and over.  “Oh, Bellamy.  Of course I want to.  Of _course_ I do.  I didn’t mean that.  I just meant we can’t do it _now._  Not while you’re still healing.  It’s too soon.  You shouldn’t be lying on your stomach, you shouldn’t be exerting yourself – “

“I want to,” Bellamy insisted, but Kane shook his head.

“We can’t,” he said, reluctance and resolve intermingled in his voice.

“Why?”

“Because it wouldn’t be gentle,” Kane murmured, and a shiver of anticipation flew up and down Bellamy’s spine.  Kane saw, and kissed him lightly.  “We’ll get there,” he whispered.  “I promise.  I want it too, Bellamy.  I mean I want you that way too.  But even for that, I can’t hurt you.”

The thought about what Kane might be thinking – about what he was picturing in his head right now that made him so sure it wouldn’t be gentle – made Bellamy’s cock swell even harder, and the pressure was beginning to rise high enough that it felt like a torment.  “More,” he moaned, “more, please, please, more.”  And then everything went black and he began to see stars as Kane’s mouth began kissing its way down his body.

Abby’s tongue was small and soft and light, and even though it had been months ago the sensation of her mouth on his cock was seared into Bellamy’s mind.  But everything about Marcus Kane was different.  His tongue was big and hard and sandpaper-rough, like an animal, sending hot-cold shivers of sensation down Bellamy’s spine.  He paused for a long moment at the hard, angular V-shaped planes of muscle at Bellamy’s hips, his tongue sweeping hungrily across the golden skin.  Bellamy’s fists clutched desperately at the sheets as the silky-rough caress of beard and lips and tongue made their way nearer and nearer to the yearning ache between his thighs.  He tried whispering “More,” but Kane was taking his time.  He was savoring Bellamy’s impatience; Bellamy thought he could almost feel him smiling as his mouth trailed lower and lower.  But when it finally happened – when Kane’s rough beard and hungry tongue and impossibly soft lips finally reached their destination and brushed ever so lightly against the base of Bellamy’s cock – they were both startled by the electric shock of pleasure that passed through them.

“I remember,” whispered Kane in a tone of stunned wonderment.  “I’ve been here before, in Abby’s memories.  I already remember what you taste like.”  

There was something in his voice that made Bellamy’s heart stop beating, and it had nothing to do with the warm press of his mouth against the most sensitive places on Bellamy’s body.  It was something deeper and heavier than sex, something that stirred Bellamy deep in the pit of his stomach and made him feel weak all over, not just with pleasure but with a heady rush of emotion that made him want to do everything at once.  He wanted Kane to throw him up against the wall and take him with the full force of his strength, but he also wanted to curl up into his arms and rest his head on Kane’s chest.

Then that soft, hungry mouth found Bellamy’s cock again and all conscious thought disappeared.

It was nothing but sheer pleasure.  Kane’s mouth was warm and wet and hungry and his rough tongue traced the pattern of ridged veins from base to tip before bathing the sensitive head with soft, molten liquid kisses.  Everywhere the silky bristle of beard brushed against him felt so alive with sensation it was like bursting into flame.  “Does that feel good?” Kane whispered, lifting his head as Bellamy’s hips rose and rose off the mattress, and he couldn’t say what he really wanted to say, he couldn’t find words for the way his whole body felt simultaneously incandescent and electric, so all he did was nod as more and more of Kane’s mouth swallowed him up, drawing him inside the hot warm depths of his mouth and throat and savoring the warm taste of him.

When Bellamy felt himself begin to accelerate downhill towards the explosive orgasm he could feel building and building through his entire body, he tensed up almost instinctively to avoid the mortification of bursting inside Kane’s mouth without knowing whether Kane really wanted him to.  But Kane was prepared for this.  “Let go,” he whispered, his hands strong and soothing as they ran up the hard flat planes of Bellamy’s muscular thighs, soothing the tension away.  “Close your eyes and let go, Bellamy.  It’s all right.  Please.”

“It was the “please” that did it, the little flicker of urgent longing that told Bellamy this was what Kane wanted too.  He wanted to say “yes, yes, more, yes”, but he couldn’t speak.  He could hardly even breathe.  His hands were clenched tightly in white-knuckled fists, his eyes pressed tightly shut.  It was too much.  He couldn’t believe it was real.  He couldn’t let himself trust it.  It had crashed over him out of nowhere like a tidal wave, this roaring rush of unexpected desires, and he’d never seen it coming.  It had been the same with Abby; one moment he was irritatingly trapped in a Rover with the Chancellor for twelve hours, and the next moment he was in love with her.  It had happened that fast.  He hadn’t let himself call it that, or even admit it to himself, but that’s what it had been from the first moment she kissed him.

But no, it was before that.  It was too simple to say it had begun with the kiss, because hadn’t it really begun with the pounding hail and the moonshine and the way it felt to talk to her, the way it felt to have someone _listen?_  Hadn’t he known even before she touched him that he wanted her to kiss him, wanted it desperately, and yet was struck speechless with shock when she finally did?

It was like that now.  It was like that with Kane.  He had known without knowing, just like before.  Because there was no other word for the way he’d stepped in front of the Rover at the Arkadia gates and looked into Kane’s eyes and known, all the way down to the marrow of his bones, that it wasn’t a stalemate, it was only the façade of one.  Kane _could_ run him down and smash the Rover through the gates, but he never, ever would; just like Bellamy would never pull the trigger of that gun.  Bellamy had always known that, but he hadn’t known the name for _why._  Just like he hadn’t known the name for the way he felt his heart snap in half as Pike pronounced Kane’s death sentence.  It was so naïve in hindsight; he’d felt it happen, actually _felt_ his heart break with a palpable physical shattering in his chest, yet he’d never thought to call it that.  Because only one thing can break a heart, and it had never for a moment occurred to him that it was the only true and right name for this.

So he said it.

Out loud.

“I love you,” he told Kane, very simply and calmly, suddenly not afraid at all, and Kane lifted his head to look at him, stunned for a long moment into silence.

He hadn’t meant to make him stop – not this close, not when he was hovering right over the edge – but it had suddenly struck him as a thing that had to be said, and now, without wasting any more time.  “Abby said it was okay,” he went on, by way of explanation, seeing that Kane was still staring at him with wide startled eyes, unmoving.  “I don’t know how she thinks it will work, exactly, but she seems to think that it will.  All of us, I mean.  Her and me and you.  I mean, like, that we all . . .”  He stopped.  The sudden realization that Kane still hadn’t said anything swept over him and left him feeling suddenly nervous, fumbling, uncertain.  “I said it to her,” he began again, not quite sure why it sounded like he was apologizing.  “And she said it to me.  And she said that she’s also said it to you.  So I thought . . . I thought maybe it would be okay if I – because I _do_ , I just didn’t know what – “

“I love you too,” said Kane, so quietly Bellamy almost didn’t hear him, and then the whole world stopped moving as he was suddenly right there, his hands cradling Bellamy’s face, pressing kiss after kiss against his mouth as though he’d never held anything so precious before in all his life, and even though Bellamy was iron-hard against Kane’s thigh and aching for release, it was worth it, the waiting, it was worth it to be held like this, to be loved like this, to feel the warmth of Kane’s whole body and whole heart settle over him like a blanket and wrap him up so tight and close that Bellamy knew he would never feel cold again.

Then, “close your eyes,” Kane murmured, running a gentle hand through Bellamy’s hair and pressing one last kiss against his mouth, and Bellamy did.  He closed his eyes and let himself feel everything.  The brush of beard sweeping back down his abdomen to the ache between his thighs.  The strong warm hands gripping his hips firmly.  The hot breath, smelling deliciously of coffee and cinnamon, that swirled all over his skin.  And then he was inside Kane’s mouth again, and he knew that this time Kane would not let go until Bellamy had tumbled all the way off the cliff, that there was nothing left to stop the tidal wave that was about to sweep over and consume him.  So he did what Kane had told him.

He let go.

The pressure rose and rose inside his chest as Kane’s mouth drew him in deeper and deeper, and he felt his hands let go of the sheets they were clenching to slide up and grip Kane’s shoulders, then tangle in his soft dark hair.  Kane’s hair felt like heaven beneath his hands, so he stayed there, stroking, caressing, and he could feel Kane’s soft sighs around his cock deepen and grow more urgent, and it did something to Bellamy’s heart, knowing he was capable of returning pleasure with such a simple touch.  It felt so good to make Kane feel good.  Bellamy was overcome with a passion of generosity, of desire to bring Kane this kind of pleasure.  He wanted it to be his turn, to hold Kane in his arms, to kiss him, to stroke him into desperate ecstatic release and then cradle him as he trembled into stillness.

He had never known he had this inside him, that he could love anyone like this, and yet here he was, and it had happened twice.

The tidal wave rose up inside him and he heard, as if from a long distance away, a low wild animal sound, a rough desperate groan of pleasure that startled him with its rawness.  But the sound was silenced – and all the breath startled out of his lungs – as a soft gentle mouth pressed down against his, with two small soft hands caressing his face and hair.

His eyes flew open, and there was Abby, kneeling at his bedside, cradling his face in her hands and kissing him over and over.  He opened his mouth to speak, but it was too late.  Kane’s hands had joined his mouth, softly and firmly stroking up and down Bellamy’s shaft with insistent fingers, and he felt himself topple over the cliff.  Abby smiled down at him encouragingly as he came and came and came, shuddering and gasping as he filled Kane’s mouth over and over again.  Kane swallowed it all, a little uncertain at first but gaining confidence as he went, his hands caressing every last drop out of Bellamy until he sank weakly back against the mattress.

Abby leaned down and kissed his mouth softly, smiling, her eyes full of affection and desire as she pulled away.

“Hi,” he said to her, unable to get out anything more coherent than that as he struggled to catch his breath.

She grinned at him.  “Hi,” she said back, then stood up from where she knelt on the floor, biting her lip ever so slightly as her hands drifted down to unfasten her jeans and push them off her hips.  She was barefoot already, stepping easily out of the stiff fabric as it fell to the floor, then tugged off her sweater and bra.  The black cotton panties went last, once she was fully confident she had their complete attention, followed only by the elastic band holding back her ponytail.  Naked, her caramel-gold hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, she made her way over to the bed where the men lay watching her, and climbed in beside them.

Bellamy didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly he and Kane were moving as one, as if linked together.  Abby reclined happily against the heap of pillows, arms flung out wide, opening herself up, and they descended on her as though they were one being with one mind, Bellamy sinking down to devour one soft, white, perfect breast and Kane the other.  Abby’s hands came up to tangle in their hair, caressing and encouraging them as two ravenous tongues swirled across her skin.  Her breast was smooth as silk inside Bellamy’s mouth, tasting pleasantly of sweat and the cedarwood chips she stored her clothes in, and her rose-pink nipple hardened and pebbled beneath his kisses.  He was still spent and sated but Abby’s soft, fluttering, breathy sounds of pleasure made him tremble anyway, and he found himself wondering how long it would be before he would be ready for more.

He looked up from time to time to watch Kane tending with an almost religious devotion to Abby’s other breast, and he thought about how strange it was that there should be no jealousy among them at all, nothing but love and desire and pleasure.  It made him feel warm and languid all over to watch the salt-and-pepper bristle of Kane’s beard sweep across the creamy white skin of Abby’s breast.  It made him feel good that _they_ felt good.

When Kane lifted his head from Abby’s breast and began to kiss his way lower, down her body, Bellamy knew without the other man speaking a single word that Kane wanted him to follow.  So he did, trailing lips and tongue over the white swell of her breast, down the slope of her ribcage and the soft arch of her stomach, along the curve of hip and the sleek strong expanse of thigh, until their two mouths met in the center and set to work.

Abby parted her thighs to let them in, draping one perfect leg over Bellamy’s back to open herself up to them, allowing him to move in closer.  Kane leaned in over her other leg, his fingers absently caressing her knee with an easy, comfortable affection.  It had been months since Bellamy had done this, months that felt like a lifetime ago, but the tart-sweet scent of her still felt like home to him in a way that hadn’t made any sense at all the first time but made all the sense in the world to him now.  He breathed her in deeply, over and over, resting his head against the inside of her thigh and feeling himself grow lightheaded, as though he were drunk.  He could feel without looking that Kane was watching him, smiling.  He could feel the swell of affection for both of them rising up off of Kane in waves, could feel that it was the same for Kane as for him – no jealousy, just pure delight.  Just the pleasure of watching someone you loved feel pleasure.  “Kiss her,” murmured Kane in a low voice, and Bellamy turned to him, and did.

He remembered the taste of her too, not just the scent.  It all came rushing back to him as his tongue swept lightly along her center and came to rest with a soft kiss against her clit, and he heard her gasp.  She had liked that, the last time.  She had liked it when he kissed her there.  And suddenly they were flashing back in time, rewinding past the months of pain and suffering and fear, they were back in the Rover, in that tiny little bubble safe from the rain and the grief and the loss, inside the dark warm cocoon where nothing else existed except the taste between Abby’s thighs and the way she gasped as he entered her and the golden tumble of her silky hair spread out across the floor of the Rover like spilled honey.

But it was different this time, because Kane was with them.  Kane was right by his side, dangerous and safe at the same time, stirring up feelings that Bellamy could never have imagined existed.  Feelings so unexpected that their intensity might have frightened him if they hadn't been wrapped up inside this man who loved him so much that he would hand over his life for Bellamy's own without hesitating if he had to.  This man who loved him so much that he had nearly been shattered by the memory of how it felt when ALIE made him pull that trigger.  This world might be full of people to be frightened of, but Marcus Kane wasn't one of them.  Marcus Kane would walk into fire if Bellamy asked him to - with Abby by his side.

They loved him.  They would always keep him safe.   

So Bellamy buried his mouth deep inside the sweet warm depths of Abby’s center and he met Kane there and kissed him hungrily and an electric current ran through all three of them, joining them together.  Abby sighed blissfully and Bellamy felt her hand drift down to stroke his hair, tangling in his soft dark curls as he dived deeper and deeper into her.  He did not have to look up to know that her other hand was stroking Kane’s hair with the same tender encouragement.  “That feels so good,” she murmured, and just like it had the first time, her happiness made him happy too.  So they didn’t stop.  Their tongues danced in unison through pulsing soft wetness, sometimes pausing to press a sticky kiss on the other’s mouth before resuming their ministrations.  She came the first time with a soft, high-pitched cry, a light airy gasp that grew more wild and desperate when the two men didn’t stop.  Her hips arched up off the mattress to capture more of them, her hands clenched more fervently at their hair, and Bellamy had to press down against her thigh with the palm of his hand to hold her still as she began to quiver and tremble.  “Oh God, Marcus,” she panted. “Oh, Bellamy.  Please.  Please.  Oh God, please.”

They had gone slow with her at first, had taken their time, and while Bellamy had no concept of how much time had passed, he knew it had been long enough that his cock was beginning to come back to life again at the sound of her soft little pleading gasps.  It was new, feeling just for a moment like she was at his mercy; he was used to her taking control, used to savoring the feeling of her power and strength, used to the confident assuredness she had in her own body.  He’d loved that about her from the first, that she was fearless.  So many people were afraid of Bellamy, or kept their distance from him, stayed firmly on the other side of his walls.  But Abby Griffin had walked right through them and pressed her mouth against his and changed everything.  And he loved that Abby, the one whose strength made him stronger, but he loved this Abby too, who trusted them both so completely, letting herself be entirely vulnerable beneath them. 

Kane pulled away at the last moment and leaned down to press warm, sticky kisses up and down Bellamy’s shoulders and neck.  “You do it,” he whispered.  “Make her come.”  So Bellamy shifted his body to reach deeper into Abby, taking up all the space that Kane had vacated so that her entire cunt was wide open to him, and he devoured her so hungrily that he could feel the muscles of her thighs begin to tremble beneath the palms of his hands.  Abby’s hands were in his hair and Kane’s hands were on his back and the rough bristle of beard sent shivers down his spine and his mouth was flooded with wetness and he’d long since stopped caring about the ache in his side where the bullet wound pressed into the mattress because what was such a small amount of pain in comparison to more pleasure than he thought he would ever have deserved?

When Abby came the second time, it was fiercer and more frantic than before, and Bellamy’s hands could not hold her hips down as they jolted up to capture more of him.  Her moans were low and desperate, like sobs, whimpering his name over and over as his tongue swept back and forth over her clit.  When she finally collapsed back against the pillows, her skin sheened with sweat and her breath labored, she clutched wildly at Bellamy’s shoulders to pull him up to kiss her.

“Hi,” she said, smiling, and he kissed her forehead, her cheek, the tip of her nose.

“Hi,” he said back, and curled up against her soft small body, wrapping her in his arms.  Kane made his way up to the head of the bed and stretched out behind Bellamy, strong arms pulling them both in tight as his chest pressed against Bellamy's back, and they drifted off to sleep like that, afternoon sunshine pouring in through the tiny high window to warm their sweaty skin, and it was as effortless, as natural, as _right,_ as if they’d been doing this all their lives.

* * *

Bellamy didn’t know how long he slept. 

The sun hadn’t set when he woke – he could still see daylight through the high little window, though it had lost its hard white sharpness.  However long it had been, though, it had been bliss.  He had slept untroubled by dreams, feeling the warmth of two bodies pressed up against him, soft and strong at the same time, and had fallen asleep with his head leaning back comfortably against Kane’s strong, solid, warm chest.

When he opened his eyes, Abby was still sleeping soundly, her breathing even and untroubled.  But as he stirred into wakefulness he felt Kane’s hand on his hip move with him, and knew the other man was awake.  Gently, he let go of Abby, stroking her hair and pulling the sheets up over her more comfortably, and rolled over to face Kane, whose warm brown eyes were wide open.

“Hi,” said Kane, and Bellamy laughed.

“We need some new material,” he observed dryly.  “We’re wearing that one out.”

Kane smiled at him, his hand drifting up to settle comfortably against Bellamy’s hip, pulling him close enough for a kiss, and that was when Bellamy realized the thing which should have been painfully obvious from the moment he first laid down on Kane’s bed.

“You didn’t,” he began, then halted.  “You haven’t, yet, I mean.  And we both – “

Kane kissed him again, light and soft.  “It makes me feel good to make you feel good,” he murmured.  “Both of you.”

“Kane – “

“Don’t worry about me,” he murmured.  “And by the way, are you ever going to start using my actual name?”

This stopped Bellamy in his tracks.  The idea of calling the other man by his first name had quite simply never occurred to him.  He was Kane, he had always been Kane.  That was the name Bellamy knew.

But Kane had been the man Bellamy first met on the Ark, the cold chilly Councilor with steel in his spine who he had first met the day the guards came for Octavia.  He’d grown to like, and then to care for, and then to love that man, but there was still the Kane he’d been inside the Kane he was now.  Maybe it was time, thought Bellamy.  Time to be something different to each other.

Time to do two things – one by one – that he’d never done before in his life.

“Lie back,” he said gently, _“Marcus,”_ and pressed the startled man back down against the pillows as he kissed his way down Kane’s chest – no, _Marcus’_ chest – to vanish beneath the covers.

Bellamy was very grateful that the sheets and blankets over his head concealed his blush of astonishment from view as his eyes adjusted to the warm darkness and he got his first real look at another man’s cock.  Marcus was _huge_ , there was no other word for it, and Bellamy swallowed hard and couldn’t repress a shiver as he remembered the other man’s words. 

_“Because it wouldn’t be gentle.”_

No, he thought, it certainly wouldn’t.  Not the first time, not with _this._

But he knew now, which he hadn’t known before, that he wanted it.  He’d never wanted that from anyone before in all his life, but he wanted it from Marcus Kane.  And Marcus had told him he wanted it too.

So not today, not yet, but someday. 

In the meantime, though, Bellamy had come and Abby had come twice and Marcus was still hard as iron, and even though Bellamy didn’t quite feel certain he knew what he was doing, the desperate desire to give Marcus the same pleasure Marcus had given him was overwhelming.  _“You don’t have to know how to do everything right,”_ Marcus had said, and Bellamy believed that he meant it – that Marcus would never judge him or shame him if he made a mistake, that this wasn’t a contest for him to prove himself, it was a journey they were taking together – so he took a deep breath and parted his lips and took Marcus Kane’s thick, shining cock inside his mouth.

It was heavy against his tongue, and it tasted like nothing on earth he had ever tasted before, and he could feel it pulse inside his mouth like a living thing.  Experimentally, he tried closing his lips around it and giving it a light, gentle suck, which caused a hoarse gasp from the top of the bed.  He felt the covers over his head rustle and shift and then he was in the light again, Marcus looking down at him, his big hands caressing Bellamy’s shoulders.  “That’s good,” he murmured to Bellamy, his voice raspy and low.  “I liked that.”  So Bellamy did it again, a little bolder this time, a little harder, and he could feel a convulsive flinching in the hard muscles of Marcus’ thigh, beneath his hand, and suddenly it was easy.  Suddenly remembering all the ways he liked to be touched, all the things that Abby and Marcus had done to him, and transferring them back to Marcus with his own mouth and hands, was the simplest thing in the world, and Bellamy realized after a few exploratory minutes – listening to the acceleration of Marcus’ breathing and feeling his grip tighten on Bellamy’s shoulders – that he was _good_ at this.

There was far too much of Marcus for Bellamy to be able to take him all the way inside, but Marcus didn’t seem to mind.  On the contrary, he seemed to like it best when Bellamy paid gentle attention to the unbearably sensitive tip of his cock, bathing it with soft open-mouthed kisses while he stroked smoothly up and down the shaft with both hands.  It didn’t take long to learn what Marcus liked; he was like Abby, he wasn’t afraid to just _tell_ you, he wasn’t embarrassed to say “I like it like that,” or “right there, stay right there,” or “that feels so good.”  It was easy, bringing Marcus pleasure.  And it made Bellamy’s heart swell with affection and generosity.  All he wanted was to make him feel good.  All he wanted was to make him come.

He felt it coming before it arrived, from the desperate reflexive clenching and unclenching of Marcus’ powerful thighs as his hips rose up off the mattress to capture more of Bellamy, from his rapid heavy breathing, from the way his hands tightened in Bellamy’s hair.  “I’m so close,” Marcus murmured, his voice dazed and desperate, but Bellamy already knew.  He felt a flicker of apprehension at the thought of what to do next, of how this part of it would feel – knowing he wasn’t prepared, bracing to be startled by the impact.  “Bellamy,” Kane groaned, “oh God, Bellamy,” and then it happened.

His mouth filled faster than he could swallow, and he had to fight not to lose his breath, gulping down the warm river that poured into his throat.  He hadn’t known what it would taste like, and he couldn’t have described the taste in words – it wasn’t like anything else on earth – but it felt like a baptism as it flowed into him, like something new being born, and the only thing he knew was that he wanted to take it all.  He wanted to take all of Marcus Kane inside him and hold him there, deep down in the place where the core of him lived, the place that had been dark and empty until the first time he came in Abby’s arms and then she had pulled back the curtains and filled the room with light.  He wanted to bring Kane with him to that place, to hold them both there together, and so he closed his eyes and drank and he let the feeling of Marcus Kane wash over him and inside him and fill him to the brim until there was no part of Bellamy left that still felt empty. 

When it was over, when the hot hard living thing bursting inside his mouth had settled quietly back to sleep and gone soft and gentle once more, Bellamy kissed it and let it go and felt the warmth of Marcus coursing through him, as though it had gone straight to his bloodstream and spread electric sparks across his whole body.  Marcus pulled Bellamy up towards him and kissed him over and over, hungrily, gratefully, overflowing with affection, and Bellamy loved him so much in that moment that he wondered how it could ever have been possible for him to have missed the fact that love was what this was.

“Come here,” said Marcus, holding out his arms, and Bellamy sank trustfully into them.  Behind him, a sleepy Abby stirred and shifted, wrapping her drowsy arms around Bellamy’s back.  Marcus cupped Bellamy’s cheek in his hand and for a long time they just looked at each other.

It was all so impossible, and yet it was true.

Abby had been right, she’d been right all along, and so had Kane, but he didn’t listen, he’d nearly destroyed everything, and yet here they were, lying beside him, warm and kind and _real,_ Abby’s arms strong and solid around his waist and Kane’s hand gentle and reassuring on his cheek, and he didn’t deserve this, Kane had almost died and yet here he was with his hand cupping Bellamy’s face in a gesture that was so full of warmth and affection that Bellamy could almost, almost imagine that everything was going to be all right again.

“Are you awake?” Marcus asked Abby with a wry smile, and she burrowed sleepily into Bellamy’s warm back, wrapping her arms tight around his waist.

“Mmmmmm,” she sighed, which could have been an answer or not, but when Marcus leaned up on one elbow to look down at Bellamy, she did too. 

For a long moment, no one said anything; they just looked at each other. 

“There’s a part of you that still doesn’t believe it,” said Abby finally, in a low voice, and Bellamy was startled to realize how accurately she had read him.  “You _want_ to.  You’ve let yourself _want_ to.  But you’re still afraid you’ll wake up tomorrow and we’ll be gone.”

“No,” said Marcus gently, “he’s afraid we’ll wake up tomorrow and remember that he’s a monster who did terrible things, and that monsters aren’t worthy of love.  _That’s_ what he’s afraid of.  That’s what he’s _always_ been afraid of.”

There was nothing, of course, that could be said in response to this, so Bellamy didn’t try.  He turned his head, a little, trying to escape their eyes that saw everything, understood everything, and balled his hands into fists to sternly blink back the threatening sting of tears.

“My mother told me something once,” said Kane thoughtfully, and he wasn’t looking at Bellamy anymore, he was staring off into the room somewhere, remembering.  “I don’t have clean hands either,” he went on.  “I never have.  None of us do.  And I asked her once – on the worst day of my life, after the worst thing I had ever done – whether I could ever be forgiven.  I’d given up believing it was possible.  And she said to me, ‘God will forgive you, Marcus.  The question is, will you be able to forgive yourself?’”  His hands stroked Bellamy’s hair back from his forehead, as Abby curled her small soft body up against Bellamy’s side and rested her head on his chest. 

“You could have _died_ because of me,” said Bellamy.

“But I didn’t,” Marcus reminded him.  “I’m right here.  I’m here, with you.  Everyone made it, Bellamy.  You saved us.  You’re the reason our people are coming home.”  He kissed Bellamy’s mouth softly.  “We know you,” he said gently.  “We know everything you’ve ever done.  We know every stain on your soul.  And we didn’t run.  We’re right here.  We’ll be here when you fall asleep, and we’ll be here when you wake up tomorrow.”

“And we’ll be here the next day,” observed Abby dryly, “when we all attempt to figure out how to navigate this conversation with your sister.”

“Oh _Jesus Christ_ ,” exclaimed Bellamy in horror, and behind him he could feel Abby’s shoulders begin to tremble with desperate, helpless giggles.

"You're not helping," Marcus reproved Abby mildly, but the giggling didn't stop.  "And the longer you laugh, the less chance either of us are going to help you explain this to Clarke." 

"From where do you get the idea that children want to know who their parents are sleeping with?"

"From the fact that if she doesn't find out from you first," Marcus pointed out matter-of-factly, "then you realize who is going to tell her."

" _Oh no_ ," muttered Abby.

"Oh, yes," Bellamy retorted.  "There is going to be absolutely _no_ shutting up Raven."

Abby sighed, stretched, and curled her body up against Bellamy's chest.  "We have one more day," she murmured.  "Clarke and Octavia and Raven are a problem for later.  Leave it for now."  She kissed Bellamy's chest.  "We'll make it work," she promised him.  "I don't know how.  I can't imagine it will be easy.  But nobody's going anywhere."

"I don't know who I would be," he said in a low voice, startling even himself, "if we hadn't gotten that flat tire in the Rover.  My whole life would be different.  Everything would be different."

"Nobody has ever surprised me more than you in my whole life," she whispered, pressing a soft kiss against his mouth.  "And I don't think Marcus exactly saw this coming either."

"Not in a hundred years," he agreed, settling back down behind Bellamy and taking them both in his arms.  "But here we are."

"You don't give up on love, when you're lucky enough to find it," said Abby, looking up into Bellamy's eyes.  "You hold on."  She kissed him softly.  "Hold onto me," she said, moving closer and closer so he could wrap his arms around her, his hand meeting Marcus' at the small of Abby's back.  "I'm right here.  Hold onto me."

And so he did.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [when you are close to me, i shiver - the slightly censored version](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7047619) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin)
  * [o gather up the brokenness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13542066) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin)




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